


Your Beasts Will Find You In Time

by quill_and_paper



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Homestuck
Genre: (I'm no artist but I'm a fair hand at PS so expect some decent things), Additional characters & relationships I'm not going to spoil, Alternate Universe, I've been playing too much Skyrim lately f u c k, Illustrated, Multi, Skyrimstuck, egregious misuse of magic, expect most of the characters to make an appearance at some point tbh, this poor horse has Seen Some Shit™, two witless trolls travel Skyrim and evade danger flying by the seat of their pants 9/10 times, you don't really need to know Skyrim to get this tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:59:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quill_and_paper/pseuds/quill_and_paper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to the Skyrim edition of two trolls meeting and grudgingly joining forces for the greater gold. I mean good. The greater good. Dragons are returning, but who gives a fuck about that? The real issues here are, 1. fuck it's cold 2. fuck it's cold 3. fuck, it is really fucking cold, and 4. how do you go about socially interacting with other sentient beings much less flirt with them?</p><p>Crashing and burning is par for the course, but you won't have to do it alone. After all, there's always at least one mudcrab nearby to watch you suck at life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't you know all adventures begin with indentured servitude?

**Author's Note:**

> I started this because I've been playing waaaaay too much Skyrim lately, and the lore leaves a lot of room for writing material and interpretation so I can shape this any number of ways. To that end this story is open for like, small plot suggestions and such if you so desire, dear reader, but I do have an overarching storyline I'm aiming to stick to. That said, please enjoy this piece of shit I barfed up at like 3am~

Your name is Karkat Vantas, son of Carmine Vantas and brother to pious dickwhistle Kankri Vantas. You are, as far as you're concerned, a Skyrim native despite your trollsimer roots; you’ve lived in this frozen icebox for seventeen of your nineteen years of life but it is only today, here in this drippy caved-in mine, that you will perhaps find real purpose.

You'd call it destiny, if you weren't convinced destiny was a loaded crossbow of steamy horseshit with its sights trained squarely on taking a massive dump all over your life every chance it got. You've had enough metaphorical punches to the jaw before whether they be from your past self’s total incompetence or some higher power laughing as you writhe, and you've learned to roll with them.

This, what you find here today, is an unexpected uppercut you can't hope to avoid.

You find one Sollux Captor half dead three months before the winter solstice.

Skinny ankle caught in a bear trap, old yellow blood smeared on the sparse hay flooring of the cage and his flesh going gangrene around the rusty teeth buried in his gray skin.

Stick thin. So thin he gave the dirty straw bedding a run for its septims.

Signs of rough handling, of careless neglect, the bruises and cuts not quite edging into deliberate torture but nonetheless ugly to look at.

A heavy pendant draped around his neck with a steel chain too thick to break barehanded and a deliberately missing clasp.

Later, you decide to blame that pendant for what starts the butterfly effect you find yourself falling ass over teakettle down. That fucking pendant and, of course, your awful unfortunate penchant for being the biggest, stupidest bleeding heart in all nine holds. Your short stature and perpetual scowl must look outstandingly benevolent somehow because assholes just kept flinging their crosses at your feet and, fool that you are, you kept on bearing them.

You creep closer to his cage with trepidation. You're on a mission here, you are fucking _busy_ \- you're not just stroking your bulge merrily as you flounce through the dark and occasionally kill people because you think it's _fun_. You took this bounty letter from the steward of Whiterun’s trembling little kiss-ass Imperial fingers because you wanted to make some extra coin, enough to replace the dagger you lost in a stream last week like a goddamn bonehead, and they wanted the newest bandit leader of Swindler's Den dead.

You crouch by the cage in the dark, and grimace. You feel this will throw a wrench in all your plans. _All_ of them.

“ _Hey!_ ” You hiss quietly, knowing full well how tits-up the situation would go if one of the assfondlers in here raised the alarm.

“ _Hey_ , fuckface!” You try again, hastily doing a sweep of the cave when your voice grates just a touch louder than intended. Why are you sticking your neck out for a guy one bmi rating away from Actual Skeleton? Shit. _Fuck_.

Only the dripping of water off stalactites fills the space, a perfect mirror to the sweat running down the back of your neck.

You swallow thickly and wonder if maybe the guy actually is dead and you just thought you saw him breathe. Only the sudden uneven juttering of his chest confirms his status as not _quite_ dead and you swear black oaths in your mind.

It would be easier if he'd been dead. You wouldn't have felt guilty about leaving a nameless body stranded in this viper’s nest.

In the dim gloom of the cavern, motes of dust flicker as they pass through torchlight. The air is stale with the earthy loam of moved dirt, the dozens of bootprints across the ground testament to just how many good-for-nothing skeever shit highwaymen you were about to inter here. The makeshift prison antechamber is cluttered with tables and empty wine bottles and barrels filled with supplies. A torture kit lays spread out on a smooth rock, gleaming either neurotically clean or completely unused.

Your digestion sac turns. You think you may have gotten to this guy just in time.

The prison aspect of the room is pathetic. It’s… not even a proper prison block, really. It’s a hamfisted clusterfuck of hastily made iron single-person cages strewn against a wall. Some have doors swung open wide, some are broken with people-sized holes in the bars ( _unusable_ , your mind supplies grimly), and some have skeletons in various poses of agony or despair, aged yellow bones mired in cobwebs and dirt.

No fresh corpses, thank Hircine. You hate the smell of those.

Your plans to eliminate every greasy bandit in this hole are squashed effectively when Twiggy the Beartrapped Wonder shakes himself awake with a jolt. It's the sudden jerk of his limbs in towards his center mass, the ensuing wince of pain when his gimp leg is disturbed, and the wild look in his eyes that has you frozen in place.

He looks a hot second away from doing… _something_ , you don't know, when he sees you.

His brows furrow and he squints two toned eyes- one red, one blue- at you suspiciously, clearly deciding if he should open his mouth first or not. You aren't dressed like the dirt children you've taken it upon yourself to exterminate; your armor is high quality stag hide, tough and broken in to the point it no longer gives you away with hideous leather squeaks whenever you so much as squat.

You ~~stole~~ acquired it fair and square from a dipshit who tried to mug you on your way to Riften several years ago. It fit like a glove and dead bodies had no use for armor anyway. You're almost glad the thief was so fatally stupid- the armor made you look _damn_ good and you knew it.

The troll in the cage is glaring sullenly at you, so you decide to go first. Because you are just _so_ good with people. Like damn. MVP of interactions has the floor, everybody else sit the fuck down.

You venture a stilted “So. What’re ya in for?”

The furrowed brow smoothes a little and thin lips purse. Completely unimpressed with your fake gritty prison inmate voice. Gods, everyone’s a critic.

Your face sours a little. “Fine, fuck you. I'm guessing you’re not languishing here for your health, so you want out or not?” You snap quietly, making like you're about to merrily traipse your armor clad ass back to business.

The speed with which the stranger tosses himself at the bars right in front of your face alarms you, but you don't flinch as he wraps spindly fingers around the rusty iron and grips like he's going for gold in the annual Falkreath cow milking competition.

His voice is hoarse when he speaks, a quill rasping against dry parchment. “Holy shit, if you get me out of here I’d be tho eternally grateful you don't even _know_.”

He has a lisp, but the tenseness of the situation keeps you from snickering. You're not sure you've ever had someone so desperately hanging on your every movement like they'd die if you left them.

Most likely, he would. The responsibility makes you nervous.

“How often do they check on you?” You ask as you shuffle around to the front of the cage and slip a lockpick from your boot.

“Not... too often…” The stranger says, but the way he trails off doubtfully has you clicking tumblers into place doubletime.

You keep an ear trained to the passageway while you fuddle with the piece of shit lock, bust two picks, and finally click it open on the third try. You don't open the door right away, and forcefully hold it shut when the troll inside tries to wrench it open. Before he can say a word you make a vicious chopping motion with your hand- _shut up!_ \- and gesture to the leg he hasn't placed a bit of weight on.

“Can you even walk?” Who are you kidding, you already know the answer. Fuck your life.

“N- _yes_ , just don't leave me here!”

Still holding the door shut with one hand forcing back Skinny’s best efforts, you groan. Your other palm becomes a cradle for your forehead as you bury your face into it and come to the only decision that you can.

“What's your name, you sad fucking excuse for a ‘mer?” You ask the sack of bones from between your fingers.

He glares at you, but answers with a short “Sollux.”, emphasizing the S with the air of someone truly tired of having to do so. You nod and cast a last look over your shoulder. Your route is clear.

“Sollux. Great. I'm Karkat, and for the next half hour of your miserable fucking life I don't want to hear my name, the name of any gods taken in vain, or insults regarding myself or my mother for this.”

Sollux has the decency to look alarmed as you pat yourself down and rearrange your pack and a few of your weapons. You meet his eyes and snarl, with as much feeling as you can get across, a brief “What I'm saying is that unless you get _shot_ , I don't want to hear a fucking word out of you until we’ve blown this joint like a prostitute.”

When you remove your hand and haul open the cell door, it makes the almighty screech of grating metal you knew it would. Sollux stands dumbfounded, hand still half raised, and you find this to be preferable. It makes it infinitely easier to grab his wrist and fairly _fling_ him out of the cage with the slightest tug, crouch, shove your shoulder under his stomach, and heave all hundred or so pounds of him- ten of which has to be his fashionable ankle accessory- up across your back beartrap and all.

Other than a pained _whuff_ of air in your ear, the first sounds to set your blood pumping are indistinct shouts from a side storage room mere yards away. Immediately someone raps a weapon against a shield, and the clanging alarm throughout the bandit den has you hauling ass back the way you came. You hear the _ffftt!_ of arrows launching after you, clattering against stone walls uselessly when you tear around a corner. You think you accidentally clip Sollux’s beartrap/leg combo disaster as you scramble to put distance and walls between you and the archers.

You are impressed that all he makes is a muffled yelp into your neck, so you graciously decide not to stop and use him as a meat shield. Clearly he can follow simple directions to the letter in life or death situations, a trait you think more numbskulls ought to have.

Well. Ought to have _had_ , for most of them.

“You ever ridden a horse? Please gods, for the love of all that is unholy, tell me you've ridden a horse before at least _once_ in your unfortunate life.” You pant as you scrabble for purchase on slippery gravel. Your boots dislodge a cluster of mushrooms with a gross squish.

“Fuck you, I can ride.” He gasps back, impressing you again by not yelling and further giving away your exact position.

Someone give this troll a goddamn medal. His IQ is looking to be at _least_ on par with mudcrab levels and all you've done so far is drag him around like a sack of potatoes.

“Fan- _fucking_ -tastic.” You mutter, not slowing a whit even if it jars his leg and is making his ribcage jab into your head like a stack of plates.

You almost take a wrong turn at the annex between the crummy kitchens and the quaint little  ~~apothecary~~ skooma brewing alcove, but are saved from yourself _by_ yourself. Slick spatters of dark blood signify exactly what route past you took and you are retrospectively _so_ glad you opted for your messier sickles rather than your bow. The angry shouts tailing you grow fainter, and it inspires you to pour on a final burst of speed up an incline steep enough to make your thighs burn. You'll feel that one in the morning, since you are relatively confident at this point that you won't end up dead six ways from Sundas and will in fact live long enough to see another morning.

You shuffle Sollux to your left shoulder to grab at the handle to the wooden doors jerry rigged into the cave’s mouth, and regret the way it makes him wheeze a little. You don't regret that it gives you precious time to slam the doors behind you and snatch a shitty sword off the ground by a brazier to jam through the handles. If you weren't already guaranteed a clean escape, the minutes those piss jesters would spend taking an axe to their own hideout entryway would buy you more than enough time.

You fit your thumb and pointer finger into your mouth and whistle high and shrill, breathing harsh in the echoing silence of the sleeping grassland. Above you, between the crags of a mountain and towering firs, the waxing moons Masser and Secunda bestow muted light upon the taiga in a brush of soft silver.

You calculate the moon phases in your head like clockwork. Sollux sucks in air like Nirn’s loudest horker.

Before you can comment on that, your horse Allie picks her way around a sprawling tangle of mountain flowers delicately. She edges closer glacially, always wary at first, but you really don't have the time to be playing chicken with a horse tonight.

“Allie! Get over here, come the fuck on.” You whisper-shout, and give another short whistle.

The mare plods over, resigned, and any fucks you might ever have given about Sollux’s comfort evaporate when he accidentally knees you in the side with his beartrap. You ~~gently~~ ~~softly~~ ~~carefully~~ throw him onto Allie’s saddle lengthways like a fresh kill while you undo the fasten on a saddlebag.

You get the feeling he's about to complain, can actually hear him start sounding out an affronted vowel, when much louder shouts from the cave tunnel cut him off.

You locked them in temporarily, but there's nothing to stop arrows fired through the small slats in the door from turning your impromptu entourage into badly feathered hagravens for Witches' Festival.

Allie knickers complacently when you shove a carrot her way, smushing the flap on the saddlebag shut hastily. You again ~~politely delicately~~ ~~with great care~~ manhandle your new charge off your horse, sparing only a quick “shit, my bad” when you elbow one of his horns hard enough to make him reel and blink away stars.

You steady Sollux with both hands on his shoulders. He sways like the sign outside the Pawned Prawn on a windy day, but manages to stay more or less upright when you take your hands away.

You nod, satisfied, and mount your horse.

Sollux promptly wigs right the fuck out.

“Wait! Where are you going!? You can't jutht take off _now_ , what the fuck!” He demands, darting out a bony hand and gripping your saddle with all the strength of an elderly butterfly.

You scrunch your nose at him and whack his hand away. “Maybe if you'd stop being a basket case for all of three fucking seconds, your infinitesimally small frontal cortex would realize that _I_ have to get on the horse _first_? You know, unless _you_ want to steer. I passed a lot of lovely ditches and cliffs on the way here I'm sure you'd be tickled to run us right off of.”

You wish you could read minds, because Sollux looks like he's painting an interesting picture indeed with all the colorful language passing silently behind his narrowed eyes.

When you offer your hand down to him, he only hesitates long enough for a nasty expletive from behind the doors of the cave to spur him into latching onto your arm like a madman. You yank him up into the saddle behind you, smoothing a hand down Allie’s neck when she shifts at the unfamiliar added weight.

“Don't fall off, this is a one way trip. Got it, fuckwaffle?” You ask when Sollux nearly loses his shit at the doors heaving mightily against your improvised sword bar.

“Fine, ok, fuck! Jutht go, holy shit!” He shouts desperately, squeezing you around the middle like a prized teddy bear.

You click twice at Allie, tap your heels to her sides once, and in a lurch the two of you are off.

It doesn't surprise you when hours later, several miles out and a mere twenty minutes from the main road, Sollux faints.

Well. You could do with a good hunt and night by a warm fire anyway.

And Sollux looks like he could stand to eat a fucking steak or ten.


	2. A non-government sanctioned disunion takes place between an unhappy couple

You wake to a dizzy view of the stars, and the sight steals your breath away.

You will never take seeing those stars for granted again. Like diamonds strewn across a living oil spill, an aurora twists in the clouds lazily.

You must be somewhere north. Where the fuck are you?

A bedroll’s fur blanket falls away when you sit up, and sluggishly you fill in the blanks of your memory. Captive. Then a short and angry guy freed you? And apparently left you at a campsite from the look of things. (His campsite? God, your head pounds. This amulet is like a stopgap holding back a tidal wave and it _hurts_.)

It's still well into the night, judging by Secunda just visible on the horizon. It's cold out, which would make sense if you were indeed up in the northern territories. The chill in the air coerces you to pull your blanket back up.

Doing so startles a yelp out of you when it snags on the beartrap. ( _Your_ beartrap, you've come to bitterly calling it. You've been stuck with it for some time now.) Looking at the wound makes you feel queasy and seeing the damage only seems to amplify the pain, but you stomach a glance down at it long enough to note it at least appears cleaner than before.

You're a little disappointed. Perhaps some part of you had hoped you'd wake up, and _poof_ , it would be gone. That everything would be right as rain, and you wouldn't have to sit around knowing it’d have to get pried off eventually. (Soon. Or you wouldn't have a leg left for it to matter one way or the other.)

Something stomps a hoof at a hard patch of earth behind you, and the sound makes you nearly jump out of your skin even as relief floods you. It’s that guy’s horse. So unless you just acquired a free hand-me-down steed, he didn't ditch you in the middle of a cold forest at night. It's more reassuring than your pride wants it to be. Fuck that ornery little asshat, saving you in such a crude way. He _did_ pull it off, but still. What a shitbox.

You figure you may as well get comfortable until he comes back. You scoot as close to the fire as you can get without being in danger of burning the shitty thin shirt and pants they forced you to change into clean off your malnourished frame. You miss your robes.

The heat leaches into your body like mead, lulling you in spite of the constant corona of pain around your ankle. Tiredly, you bring your hand up to tug fruitlessly on the enchanted amulet that has been the bane of your existence for months now.

Silenced. You're a mage, and they silenced you. You've never felt so helpless in your life.

Unless your host is packing a collapsible smithy in those saddlebags, the odds of you getting this infernal thing off before the week is out are slim at best. The fuckers that had taken you had the uncharacteristic foresight to forge the piece of shit closed and nothing short of decapitation, traumatic levels of blunt force, or proper smithing tools would remove it.

Lest you wear your fingers raw again pulling, you drop your hand in defeat. You curl your nails into your palm and rest your head on your arm, breathing out a whistle-y sigh. Hunger is a feeling you've learned to deal with, even now as it gnaws on your innards like a brand of fire. The skeletal drape of your flesh is concerning. You've always been on the slight and waifish end of the body weight spectrum, but you think now you could probably wrap your thumb and forefinger around your wrist with room to spare.

...You can. Fuck.

You eventually drift off, the popping of the fire and Allie’s grazing a more comforting backdrop than drunken bandits and the maddeningly incessant dripping of water underground ever were. You're not sure how long you drift. Sometimes you dream, of negligible things you won't remember upon waking. Sometimes you hiss, a small expression of pain when your ankle is jostled in your subconscious movements.

When you wake, it's to Karkat running a hand down Allie’s snout placatingly, the tied back hooves of a young dead buck with tiny twiglike horns in his other hand. If he notices you're awake, he doesn't comment on it as he drags his kill over to the fire pit. When he drops the stag in the dirt, you twist your face away and wipe at the dust kicked up in your eyes.

This catches his attention, and Karkat focuses on you like a nocked arrow as you slowly sit up.

You both just kind of… sit there, for a while. Regard each other, size each other up, imagine a dozen different conversation paths and wonder which to settle on.

Karkat breaks the ice by snorting and stepping around you to rootle through his horse's packs. Amidst the clanging of pots and pans he makes a stilted attempt at conversation.

“So. I see nothing ate you while I was gone.” He notes, setting a large black pan on the ground.

“Yeah. I'm peachy, thankth. Super glad the wolveth weren't feeling too hungry tonight.” You snark immediately, feeling foolish for not considering sooner how vulnerable you were here just _sleeping on the ground_ in the _woods_ at _night_.

“I hate to break this to you, but you're not even worth eating, fuckface. The energy a predator would expend trying to chew up your skinny ass would be less than what they'd gain.” Karkat volleys back without missing a beat, clipping a wicked knife to his belt and bending down to retrieve the pan.

You totally, pointedly don't look at his ass. If the three second rule counts for food dropped on the ground, it can count for ass gazing too, right? Right. “Then how did you know I wouldn't thteal your horse and take off?” You ask, idly wondering just how many sharp objects a person has to be carrying before your self preservation filter overrides your snark gland.

Evidently, a whole shitload. Your guards never managed to find that limit either; it remains a mystery for the ages.

“Allie would have curbstomped the tar out of you. She knows better than to let living totem poles take off with her alone.” Karkat answers flippantly, setting the pan atop the hot coals by the edge of the fire. "If you could even mount up to begin with. Which I sincerely doubt." He adds.

You look away when he draws the carving blade down the deer’s flank. You aren't exactly squeamish, but given your own wound at the moment, you are less than thrilled to bear witness to more mutilated flesh. The sound in and of itself is gross enough, a tearing, wet sort of noise. You can smell the blood on the wind and try not to toss your sweet rolls at the way you remember your own leg smelling like that on day one of your holy matrimony to your dear wife beartrap.

You want a fucking divorce. Like, _now_.

“Can you help me get thith thing off?”

You don't care if your plea comes out a little whinier than anticipated. You can't get this thing off alone.

Karkat contemplates your beartrap from across the fire for a long moment as if weighing its aesthetic merits.

“I was going to wait until you'd had something to eat and then offer you a drink, but if you want to plant your puckered lips right on agony’s sweet asshole this early in the evening, far be it from me to deter you.” He offers at last, tilting his head at you. Giving you the chance to back out.

You take stock of his features fully while he waits for your answer, now that you can see him by the fire’s light. He's short- you already knew that- but he's got healthy amounts of muscle covering a petite frame. His face is round and unblemished, starkly at odds with the angry set to his brow and jaw. Messy black hair nearly obscures two small blunt horns, no doubt an endless source of inadequacy. Your own twinned pairs are downright lethal in comparison.

It's his eyes that catch and hold your attention most. The longer you stare the more he frowns, and maybe it's just the light from the fire, but the irises look luminously _red_. Not quite rust like Aradia, and Julianos knows you've sat around fires with her often enough to know the difference from memory alone.

“Let'th do it now.” You hear yourself say. “Bear trapth are so not in this season. Whatever season it even fucking ith.”

Something in Karkat’s face flickers, like the primordial beginnings of a grin, before he banishes it.

“Fine. Don't cry like a bitch to me when it hurts.” He shrugs, and finishes slicing a hunk of meat from the stag’s leg. He drops it unceremoniously in the pan with a sizzle, and sets the carving knife aside to kneel by your feet. He snatches the blanket from you and you almost protest until you see him bundle his hands in it. He sizes up the beartrap you proffer for him, and settles on two points to wedge his padded fingers into that won't press against your wounds too terribly.

You feel dizzy just knowing what's coming, but you force yourself to swallow down the empty nausea. Karkat looks up at you for confirmation, searching your face for something you're not sure he finds as you nod grimly.

“Wussy bitch says what?”

“What??”

With a blistering flash of pain, you yowl as the trap's teeth are wrenched out of your flesh without warning. Karkat unkindly kicks your bum leg out of the way as he drags the trap off completely, yanks his hands away, and slings it into the woods by its chain like a tetanus bola.

You are aware, in a shocked numb part of your brain, of Karkat returning to puttering around with his belongings. The majority of your current consciousness consists of expletives and wordless signals of raw hurt. Higher thought has deserted you in favor of causing you to make this embarrassing little whine deep in the back of your throat.

“Here. Let me see it.” Karkat sounds a million miles away. When something touches the flaming tender skin of your ankle, you snap.

You hiss a warning, loud and rattly, and Karkat returns the favor with a low growl rumbling like chipped stones in his chest. Your threat display is returned, somewhat, but altogether ignored. Karkat rudely pulls you closer by your good leg, and you end up sprawled in the dirt and flopped so close to the fire you're not sure if your hair is what's burning or not.

“Will you hold the fuck still, oh my god. I've had an easier time shoveling shit with a broken spoon before.” Karkat grouses at you. You hear the words but don't really register them much. You try to flinch away when something wet and cool slaps around your ankle like a slug. It burns instantly, and only the vague smell of antiseptic keeps you from tearing it right the hell off.

You are miserable. You are in the middle of fuck knows where with a real buttclown of a savior, stripped of your magic and thus your only weapon, hungry, cold, and utterly broke.

The blanket you've all but forgotten about gets draped roughly over your head. You hesitate to call the gesture compassionate, especially when Karkat unceremoniously tugs you back onto the bedroll by the collar of your threadbare shirt like a dog, but you could be worse off. You could be dead. Or held prisoner again, which still absolutely ranks below being dead on your list of things you'd rather not be.

The stinging on your ankle is a novel kind of pain, a clean burn seeping into the deep gouges. Under the wrap, you can feel the teethmarks bleeding leisurely, which is actually _more_ concerning than bleeding like a waterfall all over the nice clean dirt. It means your body had been trying to do what it could to scab over _around_ the intrusions, trapping pus and grime and fuck knows what else deep inside.

Shit. You just really hope infection hasn't set into the bone. You're a fair hand at the restoration arts, but not enough to cure something so systemic in one attempt. You can hardly regrow a missing foot either. You zone out, riding through the waves of pain as they lessen. Time passes. The moons overhead are setting faster than you remember them ever doing so as you gaze disjointedly up into the ether.

After your suffering has abated slightly- enough for you to gingerly tuck your leg in- Karkat again deigns to acknowledge your existence in the form of a plate shoved brusquely under your snout.

The aroma of simple salted meat turns your mouth into a gross saliva lagoon. You skip pleasantries entirely to snatch the biggest shank of deer off the plate and hastily bolt it down before ~~they can take it away, taunting, always taunting~~  it gets cold. It burns your tongue and you give less than zero fucks.

“You're disgusting. I've seen better table manners from skooma withdrawaled falmer.” Karkat tells you, eyeing the way you use your shirt as a napkin and don't even care.

“Thorry. I'll pretend to be the emperor thome other time when I feel less like ten layerth of caked up anuses frying in the thun.” You answer irately. To spite him, you chew even more noisily.

“Listen, you ungrateful little buttfuck,” Karkat leans in and curls his lip at you like he's examining a tuft of mold on his bread loaf, “it’s probably not too late for me to see if your jolly roommates want you back. Think of the massive orgy you must be missing right now- it probably sounds something like _“which one of you dumbfucks let the prisoner escape? Was it you, Grobug the Groin Pulverizer? Or perhaps you, Dirtfinger? That's it, nobody’s allowed to slaughter innocents or rob travelers until one of you fesses up!"_  Maybe I took you away from the greatest dungeon sex in all of Hjaalmarch?”

Your stomach flips; you don't let it show. “Trutht me, the dungeon sex wath only like, Dethperate Lonely Necromancer Hiding in a Cave levelth of kinky at best.” You make a show of over exaggerating a shrug of disappointment. Karkat again almost cracks a grin at your rapier wit- maybe he does, but hides it by ducking down to continue hacking at the deer.

“So were you late on rent? Throw too many wild ale parties with people drunkenly betting on mudcrab claw wrestling matches? Fuck the landlord’s wife? What happened there?” Karkat asks, and even with all the innuendo and bullshit, you do know what he's really getting at.

Your answer is honest enough to be easy to remember, instantaneous enough to satisfy Karkat’s curiosity, and safe enough to not throw you out of one fire and into a new frying pan. You'd tell him the more complete version of the truth if your faith in humanity hadn't been recently trod upon by the metaphorical equivalent of unwashed, fungus-crusted giant feet.

“It’s obscenely thtupid, but I managed to gather it wath mostly because I'm a mage.”

“That’s it?” Karkat says, eyebrows raising. “You just _happened_ to know some magic, so a bunch of snaggletoothed, ill-bred, waste of perfectly good breathing air _dregs of society_ decided to stuff you in a cage whose craftsmanship looked like a frost troll with feet for hands and testicles for eyes built it?”

“I happen to know a _lot_ of magic, but. Bathically. Yeah.” You nod. “Guethh what they were trying to have me do.”

“Shit, I don't know. Feces-for-brains thieves, could be anything. Trying to have you cure the stupid right out of them?”

“No. If I'd been able to do that, maybe one of the orcth wouldn't have accidentally thwung a pickaxe into hith own boot when trying to mine a vein of iron pyrite.” You reminisce. His scream had been music to your ears.

“Were they… fuck, I don't know, where they trying to get you to enchant some dildos somehow? Just fucking tell me.”

“They were trying to get me to turn rockth into gold ore.”

You deadpan.

Karkat’s nose does a funny scrunchy thing, like he's either trying to take a shit right in his pants or doesn't believe you.

“That’s… I'm pretty sure that's impossible? And before this moment, I thought every other retard on the face of the planet also knew that?”

Karkat seems honest enough- maybe it's something in his face, maybe it's your stomach being full for the first time in seasons, maybe it's allergies- but you let him in on a secret most mages guard fiercely.

“It's… pothible.” You start slowly. “But the thpell for it is extremely thpecific, and anyone who may know it sure ath fuck bends over backward to keep it thecret. Unlethh they want suspicious tax keeperth asking where all their income ith from, or to end up like I did.”

Karkat whistles long and low, digesting your words with a half frown. Allie twitches at the false summon and snorts, loud in the silent forest with only the crackle of a campfire accompanying the crickets and wind.

“Extremely specific as in, you couldn't just figure it out for them?” Karkat confirms, spearing some venison with a fork you don't remember him fetching in your pained zen.

“Not even if they kept me there forever.” You agree, shoveling down the last pile of meat on your plate even as you feel a little sick from the fullness. “I'm good, but no one ith _that_ good. To try to cast a thpell that changeth the tangible, _phythical_ aspects of a manifested Nirn-bound entity without even a baseline thpell to build off of is impothible.”

Karkat seems to lose you halfway through that explanation, but nods with enough confidence to suggest he at least got your drift. “If you're a hot shit mage, what's stopping you from fixing your leg instead of lying there like a poleaxed moron?” He asks astutely, leaning over and snatching your empty plate, standing to pack things away gracefully before you even finish processing the movement.

“Thith _fucking_ piece of utter _fethtering garbage_ is what’th thtopping me.” You snarl, yanking at the pendant around your neck like a collar so hard it leaves an angry dark yellow pressure line in your skin.

“What is that?” Karkat squints at your adornment. He seats himself respectably far from you around the fire when the pans are packed up, but close enough to still inspect your face critically when you yawn.

“Ith an amulet of thilence. They're more common back in Cyrodiil. Never really caught on in Skyrim ath much, maybe becauthe of the lack of magic usage here in general?" You hazard a guess. "Or the whole nord “ballth to the wall, bring a battle-axe to a dagger fight and fuck a bear when you win or die with honor” mentality.”

You're getting sleepy. You _want_ to sleep, so much, but you haven't spoken to another person- much less a trollsimer like you- in so long. It gives you something solid to latch on to, helps keep the quiver in your hands and clench of your gut at bay.

Karkat looks a little sorry for you as he spreads a fur cloak along the ground. “I'm generally a professional waste of space myself, should probably get a fucking business card made at this point- Karkat Vantas, guaranteed to fuck up or your septims back!- but I can safely guess that means your magic is more fucked than a draugr in the bed chambers of that lonely necromancer you mentioned earlier?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.” You sigh, and press your hand against your forehead. As if the pressure will do anything more than merely distract you.

Your claws are gross, wow. Way more overgrown than they have any business being, specks of dirt and other unmentionables underneath. It occurs to you that you probably look like someone took a beggar’s unwashed ass, boiled it in a kettle of piss, and then let a skeever barf on it. You haven't washed in… in… a while. Your hair is long enough to put in a stubby ponytail if you were feeling particularly self-loathing enough to do so. What better way to bring out your sallow, greasy cheekbones? Sex appeal at its finest.

You try to avoid even thinking about the state of your clothes.

“Go the fuck to sleep.”

You jerk your head up a little when Karkat speaks, unaware you'd ever let it begin to droop.

“We’ll hit the town by nightfall tomorrow if we keep up a good pace on the road.”

You lay your head down on the bedroll’s sewn in pillow. For several seconds you don't reply, just gaze vacantly at Karkat settling down atop his cloak. An owl hoots miles away and the darkness past the ring of firelight feels ominous.

“You won't…” You cut yourself off, feeling stupid and childish. You're twenty, not two, brief psychologically damaging captivity notwithstanding.

“What? Spit it out. I'm trying to fucking sleep.” Karkat snaps, one eye cracked open enough to glare at you from a yard or so away.

The firelight turns it a fascinating red, makes the pupil seem almost slit like an animal’s against his iris as it dances and snaps.

You flush a little, but manage to mumble “You won't leave, right?” because you can't think of a lie instead in its place you're so bone tired.

Karkat benevolently indulges your dumb question. Sort of. “No. You're on my only bedroll, fucknuts. I'm not buying a new one because I let some dirty motherfucker keep it in the middle of nowhere. Do I look like an imbecile? Don't answer that.”

He turns over, effectively ending the conversation, and the fingers squeezing your heart like a grape relax.

You are fucking miserable. But you feel better than you have in months, and that's got to count for something.

By Julianos do you ever owe this prickly little bastard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I was going to combine this and the next chapter, but the next chapter is over 6,000 words and also a pov switch, so I felt it better to not. I'm glad people seem to like this so far though. It's fun to write, and nice to know it's also apparently fun to read c: ) I'll be fleshing out the lore more as I go, but if anyone wants to ask anything you're welcome to.


	3. The Purge, Now Showing In Riverbanks Near You

Morning light streams down through sparse leaves like Meridia’s holy beacon straight to your eyeballs. They're crusty, squinted shut, and feel like they've never seen a decent night’s sleep in your life.

So, business as fucking usual.

You remember why you're roughing it on your cloak instead of the bedroll in the same second you smother your morning routine of loudly groaning in simmering hatred for the early sun.

Sollux is sacked out, curled up like an infant with his back to the dead fire. His breathing is slow and even, the deep bellows of someone not quite snoring but still zonked as shit. You can hardly blame the guy. You suppose if you'd been forced to chant nonsense at rocks for a bunch of knuckle dragging fools, and had a weapon meant for an animal five times your size removed from your extremity, you'd be dead to the world first chance you got too.

A crisp breeze kicks up and rustles the leaves of the pines. A few brown needles fall, joining the growing carpet of dead plant matter on the ground. Winter is on its way- _real_ winter, as Skyrim always tends to be dusted in a perpetual layer of frost, seasons be dammed- and the chill in the air is going to make bathing a bitch and a half.

You're used to dunking your naked ass into streams so cold it makes your teeth ache, but that doesn't mean you _like_ it. Skinny will like it even less. Especially when he dies from hypothermia the second his carcass touches the water.

You have to make a conscious effort to hold back various noises of discontent as you lever yourself to your knees. You're stiff from just the cloak keeping your body off the hard ground. The dead stag lies a few feet away from you, only the back haunch skinned and cut, and since flies haven't started to gather en masse yet you figure it's safe to carve up as much of it as Allie can stand to haul into town.

You're quiet enough to manage not waking Sollux as you section out different chops of meat and flay the hide off. Like a disgusting and morbid tarp, you let the skin fall away to the ground beneath the stag (bloody, fleshy side not pressing into the dirt) while you cut. This is a trick you picked up from some hunters you came across once in Falkreath’s hold- kept dirt off the meat like a charm.

The sun rises ever vigilantly, and your armor feels a little too warm for you in the direct sunlight like this. You wipe your bloody hands off on your cloak- all your shit is due for a wash, fuck it- and strip off your cuirass and bracers like a steamy shell.

The breeze is now a welcome relief as it ruffles your cotton undershirt. You leave the boots on, and can't be assed to wrestle your greaves off either, but already it’s made a world of difference.

Sollux is still sleeping, knees drawn up by his chest. He hasn't budged a centimeter, and only his not-a-snore breathing keeps you from kicking him to make sure he’s alive.

With your armor off, carving the deer becomes easy muscle memory to fall into. Haunch here, remove the wobbly viscera there, don't think about how the liver looks really tempting, _don't think about it_ , snap the ribs off and pile them out of your way.

“I don't know if anyone hath ever told you before, but waking up to a guy fondling a deer lung a few feet away ith _thuper_ unthettling.”

You nearly slip and cut your thumb. You'd been ignoring Sollux, off in your own little world. You're not sure how long he's been watching you but you're not about to be _that guy_ and ask.

“Really. It'th got to be in my top ten Weirdetht Moments Ever. Number five, at leatht.” He continues.

You twirl your trusty carving knife for show (you worked hard on that little trick, and now someone will finally, finally get to appreciate it!) and now that he's awake you can rummage through your stuff for your meat sack.

The bag where you store your kills. Not whatever other thing the term meat sack implies.

“I have to know, if this ranks in at only five, what the fuck is number one?” You ask, cussing when Allie spooks and steps on your foot when you reach for her too fast. All horses are like this around you and you try not to let it bother you. It's an inconvenience more than anything, you don't _need_ your mounts to like you, but it happens _every_ time.

It's probably your scent. Nothing to be done about that, though.

Sollux thinks, chewing on his lip while he mulls it over. You try to look at him without being a creepy stalker about it; this is the first time you've seen him in good lighting with nobody trying to kill you both. You figure you should seize the chance.

He’s rail thin, but you already knew that. Knew it the second you swung him over your shoulders back in the cave that he weighed less than some of the rotted away undead you've killed in the past.

He's dirty. Like, seriously nasty. The limp bangs and brownish tint over gray skin compliment his array of bruises and small cuts, more than you had realized were present last night when his cool and trendy ankle bracelet had been your biggest priority. The filth goes hand in hand with being a prisoner, you know objectively; it's just, you've never managed to get to a place while any prisoners were still _alive_ for it to matter.

His horns are unusual, if not fetching- two pairs of gently curving points, matching parenthesis of dull colored bands. You'll have to look more closely later if you can, but you think you can make out a hairline crack running down the edge of a larger horn. Horn chips and cracks are a pain to fix, cosmetically or otherwise. You should warn him not to go boxing with bears or anything equally stupid until he takes care of that.

His clothes barely qualify as clothes. You wonder if one of his captors made them, because whoever sewed that shirt couldn't make an even seam to save their life. One of the sleeves is longer than the other, ending around his nonexistent bicep while the other reaches the crook of his elbow. They are ripped and stained and smell and _man_ you can't wait to banish this guy to a stream with several pounds of soap.

You finish your appraisal of his threads and meet his eyes, watching you apprehensively. There are deep gold smudges under the sockets, bad enough that from a distance it looks like someone gave him a two fisted salute.

As in, they punched him. Not- yeah.

The eyes themselves are mismatched, one a solid red and the other deep blue. They seem dim, somehow, and you don't know why the thought is so insistent- the same shades of dark blue and red would be relatively normal on a Dunmer, or maybe a Bosmer. But you can't help to think that, on him, it should be brighter.

Sollux pretends you aren’t staring right at him like a weirdo, and flushes a little. (The dirt makes it hard to tell elsewhere, but his skin is so paper thin it shows just along his high cheekbones.) “Number one ith… kind of perthonal. It involveth the mageth college, a rod of chain lightning, and ectoplasm. Maybe I'll tell you later.”

You are immediately intrigued in spite of yourself. “Come on, you mattress-soiling ingrate. That sounds like a fun time, and you're seriously going to leave me with incomplete story blueglobes?”

He breaks eye contact decisively. The flush spreads to his neck, visible now even under innumerable dirt layers. “It… kind of wath?” He mumbles embarrassedly, making an aborted movement as if to push up a pair of glasses he doesn't have. “Hence why I'm not going to thpill the beanth.”

Oh. _Oh_. Now you absolutely have to wring this story out of him before you part ways for sure, even if it kills you.

You let sleeping dogs lie for the moment. You have more important shit to do and daylight is burning.

“I'd ask you to help with this, but you're giving me the impression that the sight of a deer heart would make you faint. Plus, your hands look like you've been digging for gold in the asshole of a mammoth and I have plans to sell this meat to people _without_ giving them exotic diseases.” You start, pulling your meat sack from your saddlebags and flapping it open.

You… need to find a better name to call this thing. Really.

“So, I've decided the least harmless thing I can have you do is bank the fire and pick Allie's hooves for the road. If you know how to do either of those things. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how pants-wettingly useless you are at basic survival skills.” You finish, kneeling to pile your cuts into the bag your dear friend made for you a few years ago.

Stretchy imp wing membrane and a tight drawstring, with the inside cured in some kind of water resistant lining kept your kills fresh and made cleaning the bag out marginally less revolting. Kanaya is such a treat.

“I've theen dead thtuff before you know, I'm not a huge pussy jutht becauthe I'm a mage.” Sollux grumbles from behind you, and you hear his halting efforts to stand up. He swears a blue streak you're genuinely proud of as he tests his leg out and finds it willing to bear some of his weight at the cost of probably aching like a bad case of rockjoint.

Which you can only imagine, because you've never caught rockjoint. Nor will you. ( _“One of the perks of being a Vantas!”_ your father would always say. _“Fuck you.”_ You would always respond.)

When you're sure Sollux has found his footing, you reach a hand into the deer’s mostly gutted abdomen and yank out the first squishy thing you can find. You identify it as part of the spleen as it sails through the air and lands a scant few inches from Sollux’s bare foot, exactly as you'd intended.

He makes a muffled little sound, kind of an ' _ack_ ’ which quickly devolves into a disgusted grimace. He bends to pick up the organ you've flung at him- he handles it like a prickly briar heart but he _is_ touching it, so maybe he’s only around 80% total weenie nerdmage- and tosses it away into some bushes.

Sollux wipes his hand off on his trousers even though the act probably makes them dirtier. “Real mature, kk. I'm tho glad we could bond over organ hot potato thith morning. I think from now on that’th how I'm going to get to know everyone I meet. Jutht throw a goddamn fucking deer gallbladder at them and _then_ shake their hand.”

“That was the spleen. I could find the gallbladder if you really wanted it though, just say the word.” You smirk into a heap of intestine you're pulling out at Sollux’s long-suffering, nasally sigh.

He sifts through the cool campfire, patting at the ashes to make sure everything is out and you won't burn down miles of forest in your wake.

“You got a last name, guy? Any family you can contact to bail you out of this so I'm not dragging you across the country on my various exploits?” You ask him over your shoulder.

The sifting stops.

“Not… uh, not really. I've got thome friendth but I'd rather not show up on their doorthteps like a hobo.” Sollux admits, and you watch him twiddle a charred branch between his fingers nervously.

“I could go back to the college, I guethh, but they'll be all simpering and fakely glad to thee me and I'll have to work on _their_ projecth while I'm freeloading.” There is no small amount of weary contempt in Sollux’s voice as he finishes up poking around the fire pit. “But I wanna work on _my_ projecth, not _their_ boring shit.”

“Seriously? You think the College of Winterhold is _boring_?” You ask incredulously. “To someone who can barely cast a shitty fire spell, that's like… that's top of the line education, you mouth breathing fuck!”

“Yeah, but if you’re gifted enough to be able to _teach_ all the clathheth there, all it’th good for ith collaboration and free alchemy supplieth.” Sollux informs you, slowly getting to his feet. “You didn't tell me you could do any magic.” He adds, slightly accusing.

“And you never told me your last name.” You shoot back, scraping some fat off a hunk of chest meat and flicking it off the end of your blade onto the grass.

“Captor. I'm th- _Sollux_ Captor, mage of the College of Winterhold when I'm dethperate, freelance enchanter and wizard for hire when I'm not.” He dictates, eyes narrow and daring you to say it.

You don't make a shitawful pun about his last name and recent predicament, although you _really_ want to. Instead, like a capable and functioning adult, you step up to him and hold out your hand for him to shake.

“Karkat Vantas. Hunter, sort of a mercenary sometimes I guess, misanthropic pessimist and better at holding my liquor than any motherfucker in a three continent radius, size notwithstanding, so you can shut right the fuck up before spouting off any shit about that.”

Sollux shakes your hand like a limp noodle, grip not even strong enough to pop a grape. You owe it to the tremors you feel in his grasp, the weak fatigue evident in every tendon that stands in stark relief at the simplest motion. It makes your heart bleed just the tiniest bit.

“So.” You say after you step apart, fighting the urge, fighting it _so hard_ , but ultimately you are weak and the opportunity is too perfect. “Good thing I saved you from your captors.” You smirk mightily even while you hate yourself for it.

“Oh for fuck’th thake!” Sollux screeches, treating you to the dirtiest middle finger you've ever been given in your life.

As in, he flipped you the bird. Not… yeah.

He stomps off towards the horse, which is perfect for muffling your raspy snickering.

“Left saddlebag, bottom fla- no, you fucktard, your other left! There.” You direct him as he digs blindly for anything thin and metal. “Don't poke her frog with the pick. I had an idiot stable boy do that last season and she was limping for weeks. Almost went back and ripped him so many new assholes he wouldn't have known which was the right one to shit out of ever again.” You warn Sollux when he shoves against Allie with all the force of a dandelion puff and somehow gets her to lift her foot.

Sollux is finishing up with the last hoof, popping out a pebble wedged against the metal shoe, when you finish salvaging all the easiest cuts you care to spend time carving. Scavengers will pick the rest of the carcass clean in days; Kynareth always reclaims whatever she can.

You grab the deer by its legs, roll it over, and free the rest of the pelt from the bones and connective tissue. The skinned, gutted, partially meatless body is a sloppier job than you usually do, but you're on a time crunch here so you'll just have to abide.

You briefly scrape your knife against the inside of the pelt to rid the worst of the clinging tissue, and roll it up tight. Twine will hold it shut for the trip, and the grass will have to do as far as cleaning your tools goes.

Sollux has silently watched you finish up, one hand braced on Allie’s withers while his bad foot is raised like a stork. He looks faintly guilty about something, and you spy what it is with ease when he fails at discreetly chewing in time with the _half_ a carrot Allie has _mysteriously_ acquired.

“There's spare venison in the small pouch up front, you desperate fatass. Quit eating the stuff I use to bribe my horse.” You inform him, thoroughly enjoying the way he goes all sheepish and digs out the food at a pace he probably thinks is coolly composed but really isn't.

You try to ignore how his ribs stick out like the branches of a bird's nest and the hollows of his collarbones are deeper than the sea of ghosts.

You feel out of your element. You should have known doing mercenary work on the side would inevitably lead you into a situation like this, that all jobs weren't as simple as “get in, kill them all, get out, get paid.” Now you've got a living, breathing, weakened person you've placed yourself in charge of, and the feeling is akin to standing on the edge of a cliff.

What is the protocol for shit like this? Do you just dump the guy off at the nearest town? Tote him around with you until he can make it on his own and no longer looks like a scarecrow? Your condition makes having prolonged company a complicated hassle.

It's why mercenary work suited you so well. You picked your own hours, picked your own marks, and knew if things ever went south you always had an out.

So long as you were alone.

Sollux pays your internal crisis no mind as he stuffs his face. It occurs to you that he is unquestionably, deeply indebted to you. As such, you can probably justify making him your bitch for at _least_ a few weeks, until the next full moon.

You just won't tell him yet. You'll let him figure it out when he ends up continually fetching shit for you, or holding your stuff, or whatever other menial garbage you can think to bother him with.

The ground feels steadier beneath your feet now, with a vague semblance of a plan formed.

You snatch your bracers off the grass and tie them back on loosely, and nudge Sollux over so you can pack up your cuirass. You do it because he was in the way, you didn't want to risk walking behind Allie to get to her other side, and watching him stumble and swear is just an added bonus.

You hear something like _“dick sucking nub fucker”_ and then a bit about a boar’s lubed up asshole and your mouth, but it's creative enough that you let it slide. You swing up onto Allie’s saddle and scooch forward to make room for Sollux, who is glaring at you something awful while holding his foot completely parallel to the ground.

“Come on, giant dongwhiffer. You reek and we need to find a river so you can go drown in it, and I can burn everything you've so much as breathed on in the last twenty four hours.”

Sollux opens his mouth to argue- about what you don't have a clue- giving you a great view of a mouth crowded with doubled fangs and two long incisor pairs, the likely culprit of his lisping. You never get to find out what the bee in his bonnet is because he again makes the aborted glasses-adjusting movement and instead drags a finger against his nose accidentally. The grease there must horrify him as much as it does you because he sullenly takes your hand and lets you launch him up and over Allie’s back.

You're strong, and he's naught but air and bones, and _oops_ , you nearly send the guy into orbit. Sollux scrabbles at your back, hooks his claws into your shirt and holds on, just barely keeping himself from ending up ass in the dirt on the opposite side of the horse. Allie makes a grunt as he lands in the saddle with the grace of a hooked salmon.

It's funny. You laugh meanly, he growls, and you snap the reins to get Allie moving.

The countryside passes at a reasonable clip, your horse surefooted and strong despite her growing age. You cross a few rivers over the hours, and disregard them all for different reasons- too shallow, too deep, teeming with mudcrabs, rapids so fast you think Sollux actually _would_ drown- but the travel is filled with occasional chatter between the two of you.

You learn he does have a family, and your eyes nearly bug out of your head when you discover they operate a substantial branch of Goldenglow Estate. You pry, though he is reluctant to offer much information, chalking it up to family disagreements and general estrangement.

He says he'd sooner stick a beehive up his asshole than live at home again, and you empathize with him greatly on that one.

He gets a few nuggets of information out of you too, a few guarded sentences about your own family. Your father is a priest of Stendarr “fuck knows where, at the moment”, and your older brother follows him doggedly like the little asskisser he is. Your mother is dead.

Sollux shifts behind you awkwardly, apology on the tip of his tongue, so you cut him off. “It's whatever.” You shrug. His hands resting on your shoulders follow the movement, up and then down. “She died when I was like, five or something. Don't even remember her.”

You tell Sollux that you are, roughly, a few miles out from Whiterun when he asks. You also tell him the exact date when he asks, more hesitantly, and you feel a little bad for him when he swears and hisses something about it having _been almost a whole fucking year..._

He tries to get you to cast a spell, to “thee your form” (you suspect he's hardcore bullshitting, you're sitting on a horse with a bag of bones behind you on a saddle meant for one, there's hardly any “form” to be had) but you grudgingly summon a wisp of frost in your palm when he continues to poke you in the ribs with his spindly fingers. Fire comes more easily to you, but you don't trust yourself with that element surrounded by so many trees and riding an animal with a brain the size of a walnut.

He straight up laughs at you. You nearly elbow him off the horse, right over Allie’s ass. You _want_ to be good at magic, magic has always fascinated you, but you've never had the natural aptitude or a proper teacher to devote to the art.

You tell him you think he's probably lying about being so bananas at magic himself. You say that you're willing to bet ten septims the second he gets that amulet off, he'll cast the most mediocre spell you'll ever have the displeasure of seeing, and then _you'll_ laugh at _him_.

The smarmy jackass just smiles, and takes your bet.

It's getting on near five o'clock when you finally find a river to your liking. Slow, but not stagnant, and not covered in swamp fungal pods or hostile giant crabs. It could stand to be a touch shallower, but Sollux doesn't complain when you bring Allie to a stop so you assume he can swim.

Or, he's a terrific floater. He'd better be one of the two because while you'll rescue him from bandits, you're not as keen on fishing a naked dude from a river so slow your grandmother could forge it in her wheelchair.

 

 

"I'm going first.” You tell Sollux, quickly discovering how hard dismounting is when there's a person behind you. You nearly kick him in the head. “Consider it a precaution. For me. So you don't take off with all my shit after you no longer look like a reanimated lich while I sit bare assed in a river like a chump.”

“After all we’ve been through together? I'm hurt.” Sollux feigns being upset, clutching a hand to his heart but sticking up the middle finger when you look.

“I _think_ you'll get the fuck over it.” You say.

You make to help him down for all of three seconds, but the look he gives you is so venomous you change to holding up your palms and backing away. If skeleton prince wants to eat dirt so badly, who are you to stop him?

He does, in fact, very nearly eat dirt. You watch it happen practically in slow motion, making no move to help as his weak leg crumples under him like origami and the rest of him follows suit.

You subtly assist by way of leading Allie off to a stunted tree and tying the reins around a branch in the most intricate knot you know to at least keep him from getting stepped on. You also untie the pouch of cooked venison and lob it to him, since he doesn't seem too inspired to get up at the moment.

With food in hand he has all he needs and, considering his circumstances, is happy as a clam to crouch in the dirt and consume like an animal.

You know the feeling.

“If you steal my horse, I _will_ find you, and I _will_ kill you. Very painfully, with a lot of laughing and arranging your dead body in humiliating poses.” You inform him.

“I can't even get on the horse.” He mumbles, but waves a hand in the air in acknowledgement. The meat has his full attention at the moment, not you.

You feel it is necessary to tack on “Also, if you try to check me out while I'm bathing, I'm leaving you here.”, suddenly self-conscious about removing all your armor _and_ clothes around another living being, even if the water and some bushes will be an adequate barrier between you.

You were never great with people to begin with. Making a living by killing them and other various things (and being public enemy number one in some places) didn't help. What does help, is that Sollux is content to completely ignore you in favor of plowing through your entire food supply in one go.

You grab soap out of Allie’s packs, a fresh change of clothes, and the other soiled items you've been meaning to wash. You undress and slide into the water faster than you ever have before, paranoid in spite of how you tell yourself you're being stupid.

You manage to clean all your shit, bathe, and hang things out to dry without incident.

Your horse does not go missing, your possessions also do not go missing, and Sollux is still planted in the dirt like a weed where you left him, forlornly considering the remaining amount of meat and likely regretting the reality of not physically being able to fit any more in his stomach.

“You're up.” You announce, and he flinches a bit. He covers it smoothly by groaning and hauling himself to his unsteady feet.

“Finally. I wath beginning to wonder if you'd drowned.” He snarks, limping past you and making a beeline for the river.

“You're more than welcome to use my entire remaining soap supply. In fact, please fucking do.” You tell him as he passes, making a face you're sure to let him see as you get a whiff of him.

Sollux shows you his favorite finger, an expression you're coming to realize is probably standard fare with him.

You've got time to kill while Sollux purges himself, so you plant your ass down on a fallen log with your whetstone and some dull blades. You crack a smile when you hear him shout “ _Julianos_ that'th fucking cold!”

Your hair tickles your neck where it dampens the back of your shirt. It always curls when wet, a small bit of Kankri in you that you are always and forever loathe to acknowledge is there. Sollux is either a very loud and obnoxious bather, or he's frantically trying to conserve body heat by doing the tavern jig underwater. Intermittent swears float on the wind to you, and some of them are actually good enough that you catalogue them for future use yourself.

Maybe traveling with this guy won't be the worst thing to ever happen to you, if you deem him at least less slaughterable than a lamb in combat.

Only time will tell.

For a while- long enough that you start to get nervous- the splashes stop and only the chirping of birds rings out.

Then- “Hey uh, Karkat.”

He sounds thoroughly embarrassed, like just managing to get himself to drag your name from his windhole was an uphill battle.

“Yyyyyeah?” You reply, drawing it out with the express intention of making him even more uncomfortable. “You need something, shitlord? Forget how to breathe? I can't do _everything_ for you, you know.”

You've been called an asshole more times than you can count. You've never disputed it even once.

“Tho, unlethh you know how to like, weave a grass thkirt, I kind of don't have any clotheth?” He says. “And I think I honetht to fuck would rather be entirely naked than put the other shit back on.”

“Yeah no, don't put the other shit back on, for the love of all that is good and pure in this world.” You hastily agree, giving your sickle a last few rasps with the stone before returning to Allie. You take out the few changes of clothes you have. You always travel as light as you can- you've got a small house in Falkreath that stores the majority of your shit, but that's days away and Sollux is naked _now_. You pointedly do not let yourself expand on that thought. Much.

“Here, I think I've got a pair of clothes that might fit your skinny ass at least a little.” You call out, eyeing the outfit. It'll be short on him in the arms and legs, but you wager otherwise he'll have room to spare.

You tromp loudly towards him, giving fair warning, so when you clear the bushes all you can see of him is a disgruntled pair of eyes peeking over the water’s surface at you and two sets of horns that already gleam more brightly.

“Here. You'd better be really fucking clean before touching the clothes I'm giving you out of the sheer goodness of my black, shriveled heart.” You snap, tossing them on a dry rock within reach of the riverbank.

Slowly, wordlessly, a middle finger rises up out of the water. You're liking this guy more and more, damn him.

You leave to give Sollux privacy- and also because you don't honestly find incredibly emaciated and abused bodies to be all that sexually appealing- and lean against Allie while you wait. She tries to be a little shit and nip at your horns, so you dig a carrot out of her bags to keep her busy. She's going to get so fat if you keep stuffing her with food like this to get her to cooperate.

At length Sollux wanders back over to you, pulling awkwardly at the sleeves reaching only midway down his forearms. He's actually a _lot_ taller than you'd realized, dressed in decent- if incredibly ill fitting- clothes, and not hunched over or sitting. Weirdly tall for a Trollsimer.

Now that he's clean, he appears to be more comfortable in his own skin. He no longer stands stiffly, painfully aware of his own grime. Instead he scratches at an arm, any lingering awkwardness owing entirely to the way your pants are so hilariously short on him it leaves several inches of bony, ash gray ankle exposed.

You reevaluate him as you step closer to chuck him a spare pair of thin emergency sandals and your thickest cloak.

He's shivering like a frost atronach is actively spooning him, but he looks worlds better. His hair lies flat and hangs in his eyes from lack of any sort of maintenance, but it shines now with clean water instead of oil. He glows yellow in some spots where he must have literally _scrubbed_ himself raw, and without the crusts of blood his cuts are smaller and less cringe inducing.

The bruises still pepper him like snow, but he looks better. Much better.

“That water wath colder than a witch’th titty in a brass bra, _fuck_.” His fangs chatter as he takes the cloak from you. “You think we'll hit Whiterun before thundown? Or at leatht before I freeze to death?” He asks, stumbling as he puts on the shoes.

Your brow draws in a little. “Whiterun?” You ask. “We’re headed to Morthal, not Whiterun.”

Sollux goes really still, and it's like watching a fire ignite because one second he's calm and the next he's pacing like a madman and balling his fists to explode.

“ _Morthal?!_ ” He repeats in a shriek, eyes wide. “You thaid we were a few mileth out from Whiterun when I athked!”

Holy lisp, he sounds like he's talking around molasses gummed up in his mouth when he's mad.

You adjust a stirrup and frown at him. “Yeah, but I didn't say that's where we were _going_ , shithead. It's a more well known point of reference than flyspeck Morthal, that's why I used it. What's the big fucking conniption about?”

Sollux takes in a long breath, pressing his thin fingers into his eye sockets. “I'm a _mage_.” He says bluntly, long-suffering, as if you will suddenly understand everything from those three words.

“...Ok? Congratulations?” You offer, still not sure what he's so fucking upset about.

“I'm a _mage_.” He repeats again, louder. “Going to a town that _hateth mageth_.”

Oh. That.

“Oh. That.” You voice your thoughts, but don't really think much of it. You've passed through Morthal enough; people know you, and if Sollux is with you, he's likely to only be disdainfully glared at a couple times.

“I'm gonna fucking wake up with a knife in my back. It’th cool to know you kept me alive jutht to throw me right back in the load gaper a day later for funsies.” He sighs, fight gusting out of him at once when you refuse to engage his theatrics.

“You'll be fine, quit being a milkdrinking little wuss-ass bitch. Just don't blow shit up like a braindead idiot and nothing will happen.” You insult him. Reassuringly.

Sollux yanks at the silence amulet and swears. “Morthal doethn’t have a blackthmith, doeth it?” He asks, and you think for a moment.

“No.” You say. “But they have a sawmill.”

Sollux throws his hands up in frustration and cusses again. “Tho I’ll, what, jutht thtick my neck near a running thawblade? Prop mythelf on a chopping block and athk a lumberjack to practice their thwing?”

“Or you could try shutting the fuck up because nothing bad is going to happen and we'll get your bling off as soon as we can?” You suggest pissily, crossing your arms and staring him down.

Sollux makes a vague, helpless gesture. “Why are you helping me?” He asks you at last, pulling the cloak tight around his shoulders to clasp it as he remembers he's cold, and it's there.

You are definitely annoyed by this question.

“Wow, _fuck you?_ ” You snarl. “Maybe because I'm not a shitty person who sees a guy being held hostage, and then leaves him there to rot?”

Sollux ducks his head immediately like you slapped him, compulsively smoothing the edges of the fur down. “I know, thorry, that’th not what I meant.” He amends. “I meant more like, why didn't you jutht ride straight through into town with me and dump me there firtht thing? It’th what motht people would have done.”

Is it? You don't really have any prior experience to compare this whole situation to.

“Fuck you, I do what I want.” You state succinctly, brooking no further arguments or questions as you mount Allie and hold out your hand.

Sollux takes your response for what it is- partly an insult, partly a dismissal, partly a kind of horseshit explanation- at face value and doesn't hesitate this time to take your hand.

You are better about not sending him into space when you tug him up. He settles against your back more comfortably now that he isn't trying to avoid contaminating everything with his months-old prison stonk.

A few miles pass in silence before he speaks again.

“Thankth. You're thtill a dickfart, and I'm thtill going to get lynched in Morthal, but thankth.” He mumbles from a point above your head. (When he isn't slouching in the saddle, he's a full head taller than you even sitting. What the fuck.)

“Eat my entire ass and go to hell.” You say, because you are socially constipated and _you're welcome_ doesn't even occur to you as being the proper response until way after the fact.

You think Sollux gets it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da, chapter 3 is up. Sooner than I planned, but inspiration to edit this struck me at ass-oclock am like it usually does. If you like the story, please drop it a quick kudos- this au is really niche so it's harder for people to purposefully stumble across it (unless they like, deliberately search solkat) but the more kudos it has, the higher up it'll be in lists when people search fics and arrange them by kudos amount. Also I check it daily and seeing it get kudos or comments is always really cool and makes me smile! I'm glad you all seem to like it, stay tuned for the next chapter where our lovable assholes will finally get their shit sorted, and get back on the road with a real destination and a plan that Totally Isn't A Bad Idea®.


	4. Low Key Racism and High Stakes Russian Roulette But With Axes Instead

When you reach Morthal, dusk is brushing the land and the moons are slowly becoming visible in the darkening sky.

Torchbugs lazily buzz between the stunted trees, and a few dartwings are all that make the otherwise still and glassy surfaces of ponds ripple. Lichen crusts the ground and creeps up the trees like splotches of a disease, yellow and mottled brown and fuzzy green. Morthal is a swamp town, but its biome doesn't grant it escape from Skyrim's chill. Curls of will o wisp heat may rise from the squishy peat mats in warmer months, but in the third of Frost Fall it is rendered cold, compact mud.

You keep having to jerk your head back up before it thocks into Karkat's; your eyelids weigh a thousand pounds. The swaying of Allie’s repetitive gait threatens to put you under more with each passing minute and Karkat is a warm compact little furnace along your chest. You think maybe you do fade out for a while because when Karkat speaks, you become aware of his nubby horn jabbing into your cheek and can feel his voice hum through his skull. Your pride twinges.

“If you can manage to not fall asleep like a wiggler or drool on my head in the next ten minutes, that would be incredibly fucking helpful. We're almost at Morthal and I don't want it to look like I'm carrying an ugly dead body in with me.” Karkat requests of you rudely.

“Thure.” You slur a little. “Wouldn't wanna miss the pitchforkth and torcheth when they figure out what I am.”

Karkat harrumphs and mutters, very quietly, “You think _you_ have it bad.” Before you can get him to elaborate, he nudges Allie into a trot and the sudden change in momentum makes you concentrate more on not falling.

Morthal’s front guard post fades into view in the inky darkness, and Karkat tugs at Allie’s reins to bring her to a stop in front of one of the city guards.

“Business here?” He drawls, heavy Nordic accent sounding extreme levels of bored shitless. It echoes metallically inside his helm.

“Trading and rest. I have fresh venison I think your tavern will appreciate buying off me.” Karkat responds, voice coming out lower and more respectfully than you thought he was capable of.

The guard nods and pays Karkat no further scrutiny. “Aye, I remember you, passing through but a few months back. Jonna said your game was good. But who's the dead looking fellow just there?”

You make to answer but Karkat elbows you in the side not facing the guard. You wheeze out air instead of words and he smoothly talks over you.

“This is my temporary employer. He has business in Solitude and hired me for safe passage since we were both heading north anyway.” Karkat lies blithely.

The guard squints at you, really taking in the dark gold circles under your eyes and how Karkat’s cloak doesn't manage to hide your stick thin wrists or ankles from view, and for a moment you think he'll demand you be left in the woods.

You aren’t sure whether the thought is a relief or not. Trees and mosquitoes won't try to knife you in the night.

The guard rolls his jaw a few times, turns and spits in the dirt, and glares at you. “Fine. But I better not hear a word of trouble out of either of you.” He warns, stepping aside to clear the road, never taking his eyes off you.

“Thank you. Divines favor you.”

You find out that Karkat can kiss ass with _aplomb_.

You feel the guard’s eyes boring holes into your back the entire way in. Still, you don't relax as Karkat helps you down and leads Allie into the little attached side yard of the Moorside Inn. He pulls off her saddle and all the luggage with it, somehow holding the pile of junk effortlessly. It's got to be easily half your weight, just the saddle alone is probably thirty pounds. It makes no sense how a short, unremarkable Trollsimer can just haul shit like that.

Maybe you've spent too much time away from normal human contact and your frame of reference is skewed, or maybe he does this on such a regular basis it no longer fazes him, or maybe the load is somehow lighter than it looks… but the way he effortlessly shuffles the bundle to one arm so he can use the other to dig out a coin pouch pings even your exhausted mind as strange.

You suppose next time you see him perform weirdly athletic feats you'll call him on it; for now, you just dumbly follow him up the steps and inside, and when he passes you a bundle of something squishy you take it automatically.

Oh, ew. He handed you the bag of raw meat.

The tavern is virtually empty aside from an orc sitting by the long hearth in the center crooning softly and plucking at a lute. His voice isn't exactly attractive, but you've heard worse attempts at music, and at least he's being quiet about it. If you had to sleep through Ragnar the Red bellowed at top volume, you'd probably go ask Allie if she was willing to share her dirt patch outside instead.

The barkeeper hears the door slam shut and snaps to attention like someone's zapped her, beginning to wipe down the countertop zealously.

“Anything I can get you folks? Food, drink, a place to stay? If it's Lurbuk over there bothering you, I can also make some peace and quiet happen.” She rattles off enthusiastically, thin veneer of excitement covering a crumbly weariness. “I'm Jonna.” She adds after a pause. Her dark skin is marred by wrinkles you can’t decide are from age, stress, or both, and she bears the air of a proud Redguard who takes no shit, ever, from anyone. Her wiry black hair is bound back in a tight braid, streaks of gray like quicksilver mixed in with the ebony.

Karkat heads over to her and dumps the saddle onto a barstool. “He sounds like the time I heard a fox get mauled by an enraged saber cat.” He says brutally.

Jonna blinks, and begins to open her mouth and gesture to Lurbuk, but Karkat waves a hand and cuts her off. “I was in here about… I don't know, maybe five months ago? Sold you those boar chops and rabbit haunches?” Karkat begins, impatiently drumming his claws along the tabletop.

Jonna searches his face for a long while, stumped.

Reluctantly, Karkat growls “I also _may_ have been the guy that got into a fistfight with that shitfuck little Argonian librarian?”

“Oh!” Jonna exclaims and snaps her fingers, recognition flaring. “You. Yeah, I remember that.” She doesn't sound upset, and Karkat only looks mildly uncomfortable.

“What did you do?” You ask, the first words you've spoken in this town since you got here.

Jonna startles and focuses on you, taking you in now that you've drawn attention to yourself. You can see the way her eyes go cold and calculating, sweeping from the heavy pendant on your neck to your gaunt face and multitude of bruises. Karkat diffuses the situation by snatching the meat bag out of your hands and in the process stepping slightly in front of you. You're significantly taller, so the effort is a bit wasted, but it at least hides your necklace and willowy frame.

“I sort of punched an Argonian last time I was here. Fucker deserved it.” Karkat admits, relaxing when the barkeeper cracks a smile.

“Aye. Not a soul in the tavern that night what didn't clap at least a little, mineself included.” She agrees.

“As much as I love reminiscing about all the asshats I've wrecked over the years for arbitrary reasons, I've got business with you, if you'll have it.” Karkat redirects the flow of conversation back on track and you are silently grateful. You're nearly asleep where you stand. “I've got some extra venison here I can't eat before it spoils. Just killed last night. Forty-five septims for the whole of it?” Karkat opens the barter, leaning an elbow on the table.

Jonna pulls the meat over and lifts up a glistening piece. She gives the pile a once over, making a few noncommittal noises.

“Twenty-five septims. I ain't runnin’ a charity, boy.” She says, groping under the bar for her coin.

“Thirty-five. Venison’s not on your menu, which means you're out- this would completely restock you.”

Jonna fingers the coins in her purse slowly while she considers it, a quiet _clink, clink_. She casts a glance over her shoulder to the back room, and with a heavy sigh gives a slight nod. “Thirty-five it is. Don't expect that price every time, troll. You just managed to catch me in a time of need.” Jonna fishes out thirty five septims and slides them over.

Karkat sweeps all but six into his pouch, sliding the rest back to her. “We also need two rooms for the night.” He tells her, picking up the saddle and bags again.

Jonna plinks the coins right back into her purse, pleased, and hands you each a key from a hook on the wall. “It’s those two on the left. I trust you can find your way.”

She bids you both goodnight- yours, slightly more awkwardly- and you have just enough presence of mind to mumble “Thankth.” at Karkat.

“Yeah, whatever.” He says, and peels off to his room. The door clicks shut with finality, so you shrug and head into your own room.

A single candle illuminates the space, barely a pool of light to see the sparse bed and dresser by, but you don't have need for anything else. That bed is the best, sexiest fucking thing you've seen in months and if you could fuck it, you probably would. If you weren't so tired. And if that concept wasn't kind of barbaric.

You take off your shoes and unclasp the cloak, but leave it atop you; it's far higher quality and warmer than the thin sheets the bed comes with. Through the wall you can hear Karkat setting things down, thumps as he walks or bangs into something in the confined space and curses.

You fall asleep to the rasping of his whetstone, wondering how he wasn't tired from the ride.

Perhaps he's used to it.

The aether takes you.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Morning’s light heralds a splitting headache. Aside from your brain enacting an explosion spell gone wrong, you feel better. Your leg is able to bear a little more weight, although a few of the deepest punctures weep pus and off-color discharge that worries you. You sit up, press your head into your hands, and groan. You stay like a statue on the edge of your bed for a good hour, only daring to move when the pain has receded to a manageable level and you no longer see starbursts of white behind closed eyelids.

You look up, squinting against the light. On the dresser across from you is a rumpled pair of clothes you're sure weren't there the night before.

There's a folded paper note on top. You pick it up and read it.

 

 

It's definitely from Karkat.

You flap the shirt open. It's a dark blue cotton doublet, with a minimal gold braided pattern along the button line down the front. The trousers are plain brown, but they do have pockets, which you appreciate until it occurs to you that you don't have any shit to put in them anyway. There's a pair of black boots by the door, socks stuffed in them messily. You hurry into those too, a _little_ creeped out that they fit perfectly, and appraise your outfit as best you can without a mirror.

It's decent. Nice, actually, when you consider the fact that it wasn't sewn by a drunk brigand and isn't stained with months old blood. It's warm, it fits you, and while it isn't a robe you still feel much less like a beggar now. You’re already a stranger in this town and not a Nord, to boot. No point wearing robes and painting an even bigger target on your back.

You figure you can't hide in this room forever. You'll have to go out and begin doing _something_ to make the gold to buy a carriage ride to Riften now that you're back on your feet enough to not scare people away on sight. You take the clothes Karkat had lent you and fold them neatly, and step outside.

The tavern is slightly busier this morning; Lurbuk is singing more loudly, a few travelers take up a table towards the back, and Jonna looks ecstatic as she polishes a mug with wild abandon. Karkat is at the bar on the stool at the very end, an ale in one hand and a fork in the other as he eats an omelette. His back is to you, but he notices you and gestures to the seat next to him before you've said a word.

“We’re visiting the sawmill in half an hour. I have shit to do, and you still owe me, so that piece of garbage is coming off and you're going to start making good on that.” Karkat informs you, skipping any pretense of a 'good morning’.

“You're not theriouth.” You plead, ignoring the plate Jonna sets in front of you in favor of gaping at Karkat.

“I am very serious. More serious than a slaughterfish latched onto the plush nether regions of a plump Breton. More serious than a spurned conjurer with a mythic dawn fetish and a villain complex. More serious than-”

“Ok, fuck you, I get it.” You interrupt him, cramming egg and bacon down by the forkful. Karkat snorts and goes back to reading the paper, paying close attention to sections involving wildlife movements (herd migrations, areas with increases in predator populations), anything resembling a missing person column, and the swords for hire page. You understand the reasoning behind giving a fuck about only two of the three categories he gives his undivided attention.

“You looking for thomeone?” You ask, trying not to be obnoxious about glancing at the paper over his shoulder. You're nearly 6'2", you can't help that your natural state of existence is hovering over most people.

“Mmn. Sometimes.” He answers vaguely, flipping through the state of the war section disinterestedly. You have no fucking idea what that answer is supposed to mean.

Karkat slides the paper and his plate down the counter back to Jonna with a quick thanks. He stands, heads into his room, and comes back out with Allie’s saddle and the rest of his shit.

  
He adds the clothes you'd borrowed to the cargo, looks at your empty plate and reluctant face, and unrepentantly takes sick glee in saying “Alright, let's go.”

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

You can tell Skinny is waiting for the other shoe to drop the entire walk to the sawmill. You've got him leading Allie, freeing your hands up to eat the roasted nuts you'd bought from Jonna before leaving.

You'd save some for him, probably. He just didn't need to know that yet.

“Just so we’re clear as fucking glass,” you start, speaking around orgasmically sugary goodness “I’m going to ask one of the workers to swing an axe at your neck. Ok?”

Sollux sputters and almost trips. “ _No_ , that ith not fucking _ok_.” He insists, hand darting up to touch his neck as if it were already gone. “What the dried up tethticleth to the face would ever make you think thomething like that ith ‘ _ok’_ with me?”

“See, that wasn't actually a fucking question.” You enlighten your fretful companion. “I passed up over two hundred septims to go into that moldy assbreath smelling cave and come back out with a chicken-legged, taint fondling, corpse fucking gangly Altmer wannabe- that's _you-_ instead of a bandit chief’s decapitated head.”

Sollux growls a little at that, baring a hint of his fangs at you. “Maybe if you could thtop kissing your own privateth for long enough you’d come to the cosmically obviouth conclusion that having a _Nord_ thwing an _axe_ at a Trollsimer mage’th neck is an idea so _utterly fucking thtupid_ I don't think even an orc would come up with it?”

“How many years of indentured servitude are you going to bet me so that when I turn out to be right about this, I can rub it in your pointy little nose to the fullest fucking extent? How many long nights will you lay prostrate before me, eating worms off the ground with your fingers while you chant ‘I'm sorry I was so fucking retarded, you are right and also a god’?”

“Probably _zero_ , becauthe I'll be fucking _dead_.”

You learn that Sollux can be downright charming.

The mill approaches faster than you're sure Sollux would like, but not nearly fast enough for you. You know he'll be fine, hell, _he_ probably knows he'll be fine, but watching him shit a couple bricks will still be funny. You cross the bridge over murky marsh water and take the reins from Sollux to again tie Allie to a tree. You stuff a carrot at her before she can try to bite you, tell Sollux “Wait here.” and duck around the corner of the mill in the direction of the sounds of splintering wood.

As expected, a burly Nord is hocking split wood pieces into a pile like a machine. You hang back and note his accuracy for a while, confirming you aren't about to accidentally send Sollux to his death for real, and approach him as he leans down to line up another log.

“Hey! Good morning, sir. I have a request.” You sing out. Immediately the Nord looks up, face crinkling in distaste the second he sees you. You ignore the twist creeping across his mouth like someone’s shoved a rotten chicken egg under his nose and give your coin purse a shake in his direction.

“For a quick and easy five septims, I need you to do something you already do- I need you to take that big as shit axe there,” you point at the big as shit axe resting over his shoulder, “and use it to chop something off my poor idiot friend.”

The Nord looks faintly disturbed and grips the handle of his axe tighter. “Troll, I don't know what termites crawled in your brain, but we civilized folk don't go paying people to cut off body parts.” He says, a followup 'no’ just on the tip of his tongue.

You backpedal before things get ugly. “Shit, no, not any limbs. That's my bad, I totally made it sound like I wanted you to commit a felony for me for five septims, didn't I.” The Nord continues to look less than amused. You abandon dealing with him in abstract concepts; the moron clearly needs to be shown the problem at hand before he'll take your gold.

You put your hand up to your mouth and shout back towards the mill. “Sollux! Get over here, you waste of skin. The nice man wants to laugh at your issues.”

“Fuck you!” Floats back to you on the breeze, but still a few moments later heralds him picking his way around lumber and rocks towards you like a recalcitrant child.

“My friend here,” you start again, tugging Sollux over by an elbow, “was a completely witless fool who got himself taken hostage a few moons ago by the group holed up in Swindlers Den. They put this frankly rather boring and cheap necklace on him and he wants it off. I don't blame him, I could swallow some gold ore and take a shit that looked more attractive than what he's sporting.”

The Nord looks unconvinced, eyeing Sollux even more disdainfully than you. You have the hallmarks of someone who slings sharp objects around, not spells. Sollux is so thin he's practically a living staff.

To get this show on the road, you count out five septims and let them rattle around in your palm. “Come on, man. Easiest five septims you'll make in your life. Just don't kill him.”

The mill worker heaves a put-upon sigh but you always know when the allure of gold wins out. “Alright. I'll follow this wild hair of yours, boy, though I don't much like it nor you.” He agrees, reluctantly stepping closer to Sollux to pick at the chain with two meaty fingers and pull it tight, see how much room he has to work with.

Not much.

The Nord snags Sollux by the shoulder of his shirt, transparently annoyed at how much taller he is with only a fourth of the body weight to show for it, and unceremoniously drags him down to the tree stump chopping block.

“Thith ith tho thtupid oh my god I'm going to fucking die, I'm going to get my head chopped off while thplinters dig into my face. This ith my legacy.” Sollux rants while the worker trundles off a few paces to pick through his wood pile, albeit quietly.

“I hate you tho much for this, do you know that? We could have jutht gone to Whiterun, where there'th a proper blacksmith _and_ a jeweler, but no. Inthtead I'm here, in shitfucking _Morthal_ of all godawful places, where only the botflieth will mourn my carcass once it'th decayed.” He goes on, cheek pressed into the wood and glaring fiercely at the space in front of him sideways. He looks for all the world like he’s waiting to be executed, and the visual is a fine line between absolutely shit-losingly hilarious and a little uncanny.

“If it makes you feel better, I'll laugh at your corpse while the flies are busy mourning. That way it's like at least one person is kind of facetiously pretending to miss you.” You offer, pitching your shoulder against the stone wall of the mill and crossing your ankle over the other to wait.

“I am thuddenly tho reassured. Look, thith ith my reassured face.”

You're already looking, so you easily make out Sollux mouth _“fuck you!!!”_

A thin slab of wood thunks down centimeters from Sollux's face, cutting off your view of him mouthing obscenities at you. Burly McAxefucker (you never did get his name, nor do you give a flying shit) grunts something at Sollux, and all you can make out is what sounds like _ash demon_.

Sollux’s bony hand comes up and grips the wood block in place after stretching a loop of the necklace underneath it. You smell rage on the wind, hot and sharp. Sollux’s shoulders stiffen, and this time you know it's not in fear even as the Nord lines up his swing. He's using the wood as a bit of a barrier and intending to strike parallel to Sollux’s neck, shattering the length of chain pulled away and pinned down without risking beheading him. It's smart, smarter than you'd give a Nord credit for.

The septims in your palm burn like coals. If your impromptu hire said what you think he did, you're more in the market of giving him a knuckle sandwich than his pay.

The axe comes down.

Wood and gold split.

Sollux yelps and jerks away, clapping a hand to his neck and staggering upright.

You are three seconds away from slaughtering a mill worker and gaining your first legitimate bounty for murder in Hjaalmarch hold when Sollux pulls his hand away and frowns at the lack of golden blood there. You watch the surprise register on his face, honestly relieved his head is still attached to his body, and you track his gaze as it slowly settles on the shining amulet lying broken on the chopping block before his face clouds with a mounting pain.

 

 

His forehead crinkles, and his eyes squint more and more until he's clenching them shut. All at once a couple of nearby ferns catch fire, the temperature drops several degrees, and the hair on the back of your neck stands on end as static snaps and fizzles around Sollux’s eyes. His eyes which are now glowing, you note when he cracks one open frantically. The vindication of rightly thinking they’d looked somehow off all this time is overridden by the odd sensation of muffled hysteria as you stand frozen for a moment watching a sorcerer have a meltdown.

A meaty hand on your arm startles you back into motion, the world snapping back into focus and time speeding up fast, too fast, you had to haul ass _now_.

You toss three septims at the Nord and swat his hand off, removing a two septim tax for _trigger warning! Racial slurs!_ Fuck you Kankri, you deduct the two septim tax for what you call _sheer assholery_ , and jar Allie's bridle a bit yanking the reins loose from the tree. You click at your horse and fairly drag her over to Sollux. The Nord is saying something, starting with a complaint about his pay and finishing with an angry exclamation as a gout of electricity crackles between Sollux’s horns like he's some sort of fucked up tuning fork.

“Ok, ok, it’s time to go!” You chant nervously, prodding at Sollux who ekes out a pained noise and barely manages to flop into the saddle when you give him a leg up. His hands seem permanently clamped to his braincase.

Your eyes settle on the busted amulet and you make the executive decision to sweep it up before you swing up behind him, give the Nord a middle finger and tune out his shouting, pick a random direction, and hustle Allie out of town and into the woods before Sollux fucking explodes.

Steering a horse from behind turns out to be supremely stupid and difficult in equal measure, but when Sollux nearly falls off twice you know the arm you have secured around his middle is what saves him from following breakfast up with a dirtpie brunch. Sollux groans and almost breaks your nose when he flinches. Your ganderbulbs are level with his shoulder blades (he's so _fucking tall_ ) and so close you are nearly giving new and literal meaning to eyefucking someone, that all it takes is a quick glance up to see a concerning amount of electricity going haywire around his horns.

He makes these hitched little shudders occasionally, the stillness making it easier for you to hone in on him trapping his breath tight in his chest like he's holding back a rockslide.

A few minutes into the forest, you notice something warm on your forearm and risk pulling away from Sollux to look at it.

“Dude, tell me you're not fucking crying, that is so embarrassing-”

It's blood.

Sollux makes a pained whine and pants “Thtop, _thtop_.”

You bring Allie to a halt and he slides off, rubbery limbs and weak ankle almost spilling him on the ground until he grips the saddle to steady himself. You saw a mage blow up a cooking pot once in a rush; the pinched look on her face was a match to the one on Sollux’s now. The glaring difference is that Sollux is bleeding a small river from his nose, and your hair is standing on end with static. He smells like raw magicka, the burnt ozone making your blood speed up in warning.

It's like watching a burning comet combust in the atmosphere. Sollux falls to his knees and threads his fingers between his horns, cry ratcheting up in volume as sparks zap the dirt into petrified little pebbles. Allie spooks when a tree a few yards away gets lashed, the glowing char mark etched into the bark like a ragged brand.

You let your horse rear and have her head as she twists violently to run with a whinny, because as much as you'd like to see this guy’s electrical version of being the exploding cooking pot mage, you also think you'd probably fucking _die_.

You flee the clearing to actual honest to fuck lightning bolts raining down with ear-splitting booms.

  
Who the everloving _fuck_ did you drag out of that godforsaken cave?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4, yaaaay. If you like the story so far, drop it a quick kudos please! :D Thanks to everyone who's commented so far, you guys are all super sweet ^-^


	5. You Blew Up a Forest (alternatively titled That's Kind of Hot)

You wake up- surprise- in an unfamiliar place once again. This time, as you sift through the fog in your thoughts, you are pleased to note you feel like a real person.

The oppressive weight in your brain is lifted. It no longer feels like a mammoth is sitting on your head, clouding your thoughts and smothering your abilities.

It's late afternoon; you've been out for _hours_. Your joints are stiff from being in one position for so long.

A very rude and annoying voice completely harshes your newfound mellow.

“...almost blew up the forest, you shithive bugfuck insane tool! Why didn't you tell me you were packing Magnus levels of magicka in your soft, shitty body? That's something you _warn_ people about, you pustule-coated fuckface. You are _literally_ a raging thundercunt, oh my god. I can’t believe you.”

Karkat continues to be a treat. You continue to ignore him and bliss out for a few more minutes. You can access your brain again and gods it feels so _right_. Your powers are back, _your powers are fucking back bitches!_ Objectively nothing about your situation has changed, but it feels like you've breathed in starlight and bathed your veins in the energy of the world anew.

You sit up on the bedroll you've become fast friends with over the last seventy two hours. Karkat is across the fire chopping up something bloody and glaring at you, a perfect mirror to your first night enduring his sunny disposition. Minus the bear trap.

Without answering him or even thinking about it, you cast a few spells and relish the magicka draining from your previously overfilled reservoir. It's like you've been burned clean, the newness of using your powers startlingly strange after nearly a year of being silenced; you never realized how much you relied on your magic until it was stripped away.

You replenish your wards, shattered clean through like frosted glass the night you took a club to the back of the head and an amulet of silence to the throat. You'll layer them on thicker later, when you have a quiet space to concentrate on the more complex spells. You mumble a diminished night eye spell for the hell of it, toss down enough frost runes around the camp perimeter to freeze a whole battalion solid, and whisper a detect life spell because you're paranoid and likely always will be from now on.

Allie flares up a neutral brown, a bird’s nest perched above you lights up four tiny spots of blue, and a fox skulking in the darkening twilight beyond your runes is a ruddy orange smudge.

You focus on Karkat and frown in confusion. His lifeforce is a roaring red flame, almost bigger than the glow of the fire. The color is right for one of the cardinal sentient races, but you've never known anything less than the size of a bear to display such fortitude. You'd gathered that Karkat was a determined, shouty little flea with anger management issues, but to have such a strength of spirit…

“I swear to god, if those frost traps send _us_ into the next ice age because a beetle crawls over them, I am going to spend every decade frozen solid plotting ways to fucking destroy you. I'll grind you into dust using only my bare middle fingers if I have to.”

You dismiss the detection spell, though your questions go unanswered.

“I thet them to explode outward. What do you think I am, an apprentice?”

Karkat slides a knife along a bone, freeing a section of meat. He studies you intently, not looking away from you as he tosses the strip onto rocks by the fire.

_Wary_ , you realize. You'd gone and blown up a forest, and now _he's_ wary of _you_.

“...No.” Karkat answers slowly, poking at the cooking meat. “But I think I'd like to take back that bet before I make an ass of myself, now.”

The ice is broken and you snicker, remembering his bluster. “What, don't thtill think you’re the better mage?” You can't help but prod at him. Nobody is allowed to lick self-inflicted wounds of pride so long as you're around to rub salt in them.

“Fuck no.” He snorts, skewering some meat and scooting over on his log to hand it to you.

You take it, and nearly choke on it when he says “That's why we're going to Winterhold, and you're going to teach me.”

You wheeze a chunk of some sort of game bird out of your aeration sac and wipe at the tears pricking the corners of your eyes.

“How the fuck do you get to decide thomething like that, huh?” You demand, glaring at him around the crackling fire. It flares higher and you angrily tamp the magicka leak down; it'll be some time before your control is back to normal.

“Um, how about because I fucking saved your sorry life and you _owe_ me? Also, you're fucking welcome for giving you your means of protection and peace of mind back. Not like _that_ deserves a thank you or anything, don't worry about it. I'll just go off and diddle myself in the woods, at least I'll get more gratification that way.” He snaps, separating some fleshy string of something with a disgusting tearing noise.

“Tho let me get thith thtraight.” You glare at Karkat, who frowns right back. Frowning is his default expression, but something in the way his tiny fangs poke out a little makes it seem more deliberate, this time. It's not cute. It's…dammit, ok, it _is_.

“I teach you thome magic, accompany you all the way to the frozen wathteland of pretentious thtaff fucking, pointy hat wearing circlejerkerth, and then I'm free?”

“As a bird.” Karkat confirms, doing the fancy knife spin you refuse to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging.

You nod sourly even as you accept the skewers of meat Karkat hands you. Your path to repayment is set; going back to the college leaves a bitter taste in your mouth but you suppose you _are_ in debt, and there _is_ something you need from there anyway. Might as fucking well. Shaping this idiot into a half decent apprentice is going to be hell in a handbasket though, he casts like shit.

“I could jutht light thith whole place on fire and be on my way. What maketh you think I won't do that?” You ask, eyeing him over the fire you deliberately flatten this time.

“What makes you think fire is going to be enough to kill me?” Karkat counters, narrowing red eyes at you that you swear legitimately flash for the barest fraction of a second. You hold fast to call his bluff, but he just scrapes meat off bones evenly and doesn't break your stare.

You think about how he can lift more weight than seems normal, how his aura flares unnaturally bright. Vampires glow a sallow yellow, almost an infected greenish tinge under detect spells. Karkat doesn't fit the bill of vampire and his teeth are too nubby regardless.

Sullenly you break eye contact to examine the collar of your shirt. Perhaps his star sign is the Atronach? And he’s been secretly mocking you, knowing any spells you fire at him would get sucked up like water in a parched desert? It would explain his shitawful magicka, but not anything else. You'll figure him out before reaching Winterhold or you'll never be able to rest for the constant wondering about it you'd be left with.

You determine the blood stain on your shirt isn't too noticeable and wonder about that for a second. You try not to imagine Karkat gingerly leaning over your unconscious body and dabbing at your blood with a cloth, but it's the only explanation for your new shirt not being stained completely yellow and your face not being a gory mess of flaky dried blood.

Under the pretense of adjusting your sleeves, and to hide the heat rising along your cheekbones, you meet Karkat's gaze again and ignore his question. “Tho what'th the deal with your eyes?”

Oh, hell, wrong button to push. Very wrong button. Karkat’s ears fold down and his snarl is deeper this time. The meat he's cutting makes a _squish_ as he digs his fingers into it hard. His eyes again go bright molten red, the phenomenon confirmed so you're not crazy at least, but the shade is abnormal. Aradia’s rust red felt like home; Karkat's blood red feels like a threat.

“What _about_ my eyes?” He asks lowly, something dangerous running in an undercurrent beneath the sentence and a veiled warning for you to _tread carefully, motherfucker_.

“I… uh. Nothing? I wath jutht curious why they're…” You trail off, feeling a touch stupid. You can't look away from his eyes, _mutated_ , but so are you with your doubled body parts and unheard of magickal prowess, you've no room to talk. Between you both, you've pretty much cornered the market on weirdness.

“Runs in the family. _No,_ I don't have any Dunmer in me, _no_ I don't know why they're like this, and _no_ there's no way to fix me.” Karkat summarizes tersely, fingers tapping along the handle of his knife in a jittery staccato.

You suspect people have given him no small amount of shit over this, for him to be sizing you up like he's wondering what the fastest way to gut you is. You very carefully don't move an inch and do something you have virtually never in your life done before; you think about what you're going to say _before_ you blow it out your windhole like a fool.

“I never suggested there was thomething wrong with them.” You say slowly, watching Karkat’s face shift from outright hostile to a bewildered tenseness. “We don't have to talk about it, I jutht wanted to know. But it’th cool.”

Karkat looks thoroughly thrown off, like you just took a script he’s been reading from his whole life and set it on fire, and proceeded to urinate in the ashes. Several times he opens his mouth and closes it, ears flicking up and down uncertainly. His eyes lose some of the unnatural glow, though, and the strange instinctual fear sliding down your spine like cold briny water eases.

“I don't…” he starts, biting the inside of his cheek as he searches for words. “I don't really know what the fuck to tell you? So far almost every Troll who's asked me that question has ended up on my bad side immediately, usually resulting in their untimely death or maiming.”

“No humanth or ‘mer?” You ask, tilting your head at him. You decide to keep your palms folded in your lap placidly a bit longer.

“Not usually. The humans don't know much about our caste bullshit, and the ‘mer hardly give us the time of day to begin with and can't be fucked to care that I'm not...on spectrum.” He confirms, and slowly resumes deboning the bird leg in his hands in a detached manner suggesting the action is borne well of habit. He still won't stop looking at you, though, so you glance away into the fire because somehow its light is easier to stare into than his eyes.

“Why didn't you ask me about them sooner?” Karkat questions you after a pause, suspicious now and leaning into your personal space bubble a bit.

“Becauthe I wath preoccupied with a bear trap on my leg, and then freezing my globeth off in a river, and then nearly getting thlaughtered by a racist Nord?” You try, quirking an eyebrow and making a cautious bid for the skewer set aside cooling on a rock.

Karkat slaps your hand away without missing a beat, not even looking, and as you hiss and recoil to clutch the offended appendage to your chest he rolls his eyes. “I've seen you staring at me, though. I'm a genetic fuckup, not _blind_.”

You stop the _“because you're kind of hot and I've been in a cave for a year”_ before it slips out and ruins your life and/or gets you backhanded. “Your eyeth remind me a lot of thomeone I wath close with.” You say instead, congratulating yourself on managing to both not lie _and_ be a smooth motherfucker.

Karkat looks a little lost, unsure how to respond to your incredibly subtle flirt, so you try to ignore the tiny spark of disappointment when he chooses a safe neutral ground to answer you instead.

“Was?” He asks, relaxing from his stiff posture with every second you spend not flipping out on him for having weird eyes.

“Yeah.” You clear your throat a little and pretend to find your claws rapturously interesting to avoid meeting his gaze. “Her name wath Aradia. She…died.”

Karkat flinches and immediately adopts a regretful grimace. “Shit, uh. Sorry, I didn't mean to like-”

“It'th ok.” You cut him off, and when you reach for a skewer this time he doesn't slap you. “There'th more to it than that, but-” you break off and tip your head back to puff a sigh into the clouds.

There's so much more. She didn't die, she was _murdered_ , only she wasn't truly murdered, she was _banished_. You remember feeling the bone deep chill of Coldharbour open like a gaping void, frigid mist and cracked skulls spilling from the slit in the fabric of reality as an unbreakable force tugged Aradia into its depths. The frantic terror in her warm eyes as she tried to scream, only to have the sound stolen by the oblivion plane she was slowly fading away into.

The concussive boom of the realm snapping shut like teeth, the absolute crushing silence in the wake of your failed experiment bearing down on your heart like a sin while all that remained of Aradia was her journal and cup of coffee gone frozen solid on the table.

It was a nightmare come to life, and still years later you refuse to give up- there _is_ a way to reclaim a soul from a plane it doesn't belong to, the science _is_ plausible, and you'll be dammed if you don't cross the planet a million times over until you find it, and bring her back.

You'll _drag_ her back if you have to. You'll rip apart the sky and obliterate the very stars if that's what it takes.

Karkat is clearly stewing while you reminisce not so fond memories, almost literally kicking himself as he fails at not muttering. His chin is pillowed in his palm and you'd swear the force of his glare is cooking the bird meat faster than the fire is managing to do.

“Tho, how old are you, anyway?” You ask lamely, picking up a stick and nudging at the campfire.

“Nineteen.” Karkat replies, taking your offered deflection for what it is but looking at you out of the corners of his eyes like he’s daring you to say something.

“That’th it?” You snort incredulously.

“Yeah, shitblossom, that’s it. Why, what are you, secretly a forty year old virgin or something?”

“Fuck you, I’m twenty one, and also _no_ , tho go eat a dick.”

“Your own hand and a grubby, well-loved picture of a swole shirtless Orc don’t count.” Karkat says helpfully, grabbing his own stick and hitting yours out of the fire with it like a swordfight to be an irritating little shit.

“Neither doeth the _Last Scabbard of Akrash_. Yeah, I thaw that one poking out of your saddlebagth. You’re a romantic, that’s _tho_ cute. Really makes you theem like a total badass. Honethtly, no lie.” You counter, easily lighting Karkat’s stick on fire all the way up to where he’s holding it without batting an eye.

He yelps and drops it, flapping his hand and swearing a blue streak and hissing something unkind about your face, so you show your heartfelt concern and regret for this action by laughing at him.

“Please. Like anyone would ever want to fuck a bundle of sticks that intermittently _explodes_. And not in the sexy way.” Karkat verbally jabs you, crossing his arms over his chest and giving you a hell of a stink eye.

In an effort to ignore the way it makes his lean muscles more visible beneath his shirt, you scoff. “You know, believe it or not, I'm not _alwayth_ critically malnourished and am actually apeshit bananath at sex.”

Karkat makes a strangled sort of cough you realize is a _laugh_. “Are you kidding me, you look so cataclysmically incompetent you probably _bring_ a banana with you to have sex. I bet you sit there clutching poor hapless produce like a grade A moron asking ‘how do I uththe ththiiththth?’” Karkat draws out your lisp unnecessarily. Also your voice is not _that_ nasally, jeez.

“Fucking a banana would thtill get me farther along the baseth than you've been.” You counter, making a deliberate show of sliding a cube of meat off the end of your filched skewer with your split tongue.

“Hey, you don't know me. You don't know where I've been.” Karkat insists, pointedly ignoring your tongue shenanigans.

You thoughtfully chew the meat- probably wild pheasant, you decide- and throw the empty twig into the fire. “Not to Pound Town, clearly. I've gathered that much.” You note, smirking at the bloom of red dusting Karkat’s face.

He throws his arms up in the air in a kind of oh-my-god-what-the-fuck-ever gesture, and stomps over to Allie to waste more time than is strictly necessary fussing with the bags for something or other.

_Score_. Kid’s gotten relatively no pants-off action whatsoever: confirmed. Also unexpectedly endearing. And...confusing. He's on the short side, but definitely not unattractive even by human standards- messy black hair, fit, strong jaw but a soft face. Other than the barbed vocabulary and loud mouth there's really not much unappealing about him at all.

And you _like_ his vocabulary. And mouth, if you're being honest.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Karkat grits out, “I'm not going to keep letting you sit your huge fat ass behind me on my poor horse the whole way to Winterhold- all it would take is a single boner to make this trip super fucking awkward. We’re stopping off in Dawnstar tomorrow.” He begins piling extra cooked meat into his rations bag, and it doesn't escape your notice that he leaves a large portion for yourself set aside. “I probably have enough gold on hand for a second horse, but in an effort to not have you completely fucking bleed me dry in one fell swoop, when we get there you should look into enchanting people’s shit to make some coin.”

“You're going to buy me a _horthe_?” You exclaim, jaw hanging open.

Karkat frowns at you sourly. “Don't look so fucking amazed at my benevolence, your ass is going to pay me back whatever the difference ends up being. As I recall, you _do_ own a meadery.”

“My ath will be happy to pay you any time.”

Karkat lights up again like a hot coal and busies himself with stamping out the fire to avoid eye contact. Just to fuck with him, every time he manages to tamp it out you reignite it. He catches on after the fourth time when he smears dirt into the patch and it _still_ sets on fire because of you, and he growls and walks over to shove you off the bedroll like a leaf.

You snicker as you pick yourself up off the dirt.

“We going?” You ask. It's getting late, but not late enough to justify going to sleep just yet when more ground can be covered.

“Yeah. I don't like staying in one place for too long.” Karkat says, giving Allie’s hooves a quick check for pebbles and adjusting her tack before mounting. He offers you his hand and this time you let yourself think about how it is undeniably hot that he can boost you up with minimal effort. Allie is less than thrilled to again be carrying two passengers, so Karkat passes carrots up to her in apology.

You set off, birds beginning to quiet down for the night and the whooping laugh of a fox echoing between the trees. The chill in the air is growing colder, making Karkat’s warmth all the more pleasant to lean against. The leaves on the trees are beginning to crisp brown around the edges as winter curls them like dead parchment.

Allie snags a vine in the path to chomp at. Karkat scolds her.

It's quiet.

“Boner.” You whisper right in his ear.

Karkat flinches away and smacks behind his head at you blindly. “Fucking stoooop you shithead. I'll make you walk.”

“You would never.”

“Fucking try me, bitch.”

“I _am_ trying.”

“Shut the fuck up and hand me my book.”

You shut the fuck up and hand Karkat his book. He doesn't turn around but you see the tips of his ears redden as he drapes the reins around the pommel of the saddle and props the book against Allie’s neck, flipping past a few chapters.

“You're going to obnoxiously read over my shoulder, aren't you.” He asks.

You shrug. “Yeah. Romance novelth aren't really my bag, but my choiceth are kinda limited and I haven't read a book in a year, tho. I'll read your shitty thmut, sure.”

Karkat licks his finger and thumbs forward a few more pages, considering, before flipping back to the beginning. (Likely for your own benefit; he must have already read through some of the book.) “It's not _porn_ , it's a dramatic epic with romance and action, you fuck. Grow some culture. You could stand to read some of the novels in my collection at home, maybe you'd be less of a fantastic failure and surpass even slime molds in basic social skills. You're hovering somewhere between 'deep sea fungus’ and 'rock shaped like a phallus’ right now, just so you know.”

You give Karkat a little zap of static, and he elbows you roughly in the gut, but otherwise returns to his book.

You read over his shoulder as promised, but by the end of the first three pages your arms feel stupid just hanging at your sides and tapping along your thighs like awkward spaghetti. You carefully risk hooking them very loosely around Karkat’s middle instead, and hold your breath when he stiffens. Partially because you're expecting him to elbow you again and if your lungs are already empty, the wind won't get knocked out of you, but also partially because you're kind of hoping he lets you get away with it.

He lets you get away with it. It isn't until the end of the second chapter that he’s unbent from his stiff hunch, by which point you are reluctantly immersed in the book yourself.

An hour later by the end of the sixth chapter, you're hardly daring to breathe too heavily because he's settled back against your chest unconsciously, relaxed as he twiddles the corners of the pages and drums his fingers along the cover of the book while reading. You can’t quite hear him laughing at certain parts, but you know he does because you feel the choppy exhales leave his chest. He's warm like a furnace, warm enough that you don't even need to ask for his cloak with him leaning back against you like a firebrand.

You think about how Aradia would fall into your lap and brush her dark hair out while humming. How she'd pull you out of your shell with kind words and manic energy, how she'd go on harebrained adventures to steal bones from the shrines of giants, how she'd sometimes pap you like sweet honey and sometimes kiss you like scorching lava.

You don't know what you were, with her, but you loved her fiercely. You still do, and when you save her you'll say it right to her face a thousand times instead of squandering the chance to soak her in again. You wonder if she'd be mad if you moved on.

She'd probably be more mad if you stayed mired in the past, honestly.

You'll ask her yourself soon enough. You swear it.

Karkat reads on into the night while you fight for your peace, and you think you find it when he sleepily yawns and claps his book shut to rub at his eyes and sigh.

He doesn't move from his place against your chest, and the evening's chill never touches you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm personally really excited to post the chapter after this one, so you all should be too. Some good shit is gon' happen. Kudos and reviews are always appreciated, I read them all and love every one of them :3c


	6. Recipe For Angst Stew: 1 Parts Assumption, 1 Parts Alcohol, 1 Parts Sexual Tension

You can't in good conscience claim Sollux is the first person to rip on you for not having The Full Sex. But, he _is_ the first person to follow it up with innuendo that succeeded in getting under your skin. Not because his sharp face and fascinating eyes managed to fluster you. Definitely not. Abso-fuck-a- _lutely_ not.

You're not sure why you didn't punch him. You _should_ have punched him.

Presently, your roles have been reversed and Sollux is a deadweight against your back, a bony disaster snoring loudly and snuffling into your hair occasionally.

You'd meant to stop and set up camp for the night several hours ago, but Dawnstar is just one more hour out at this point and you barely sleep regardless. Sollux is out like a light, sometimes waking up just enough to grumble incoherently and rearrange the angle his neck is cricked at, using your head as a pillow.

The forest is dark, but you can see perfectly.

You know it's not because you're a Troll.

You know why the lack of moonlight doesn't hamper your night vision, and why you can smell the herd of deer that crossed this path hours ago, and why you can hear a wolf baying miles away, and why you can never _ever_ let people get too close to you, get _invested_ in you, because you are a Daedric Prince’s plaything and you will never have an easy, normal life.

Your father never called your family cursed, but nor did he suggest you were blessed either; you grew up hating it sometimes, hating that tranquil outlook and simple acceptance, that you had to hide because people couldn't mind their own fucking business and just let you be.

You pass the remaining hour until you hit Dawnstar practicing the few non-volatile spells you know. You fine tune your casting of a muffle spell over and over until Allie’s hoofsteps go from clops, to squeaks, to something that sounds like a dog barking, to near silence.

You try out a night eye spell and quickly realize you won't ever need it unless you ever find yourself in complete blackness; you nearly burn out your retinas when the already visible landscape lights up a painfully saturated white. Similarly, you cast an incredibly rudimentary aura spell, and find that most of the things it reveals are creatures you already knew were there from sight or smell.

Still, it gives you something to do, and an idea of how much magicka you have to work with when your spells begin to fizzle out and a strange nebulous space in your brain twinges emptily when you try to force them to no avail.

Before you know it, Allie is plodding into Dawnstar tiredly, and you’re poking Sollux awake and practically manhandling him off your horse when he shows less cognition than some advanced barnacle species you've seen. He makes sleepy noises and leans on a fence post rubbing his eyes as you lead Allie into the side stables and untack her. You know she doesn't understand a word of what you say but you promise her a big bucket of oats tomorrow, like the real good shit.

You don't have anything disgusting to force Sollux to hold this time around, unfortunately, so you pass him the food bag because you are not so secretly trying to get the guy to put on enough weight that a determined breeze couldn't carry him away. He takes the bag from you and mindlessly starts shoveling jerky into his maw, autopilot eating as he shambles into the Windpeak Inn like a zombie.

The bell above the door lets out a tinny jingle as you enter, and you feel a little bad because the place is deserted of both patrons and staff, so you know somebody is going to have to wake up to deal with you.

The long hearth in the center is cold, only a few glowing coals evidence of its earlier use. The inn is spacious, but cozier and more well maintained than most inns you've seen. Not a cobweb in sight, all the chairs are flipped upside down and resting legs-up on the tabletops like trees, and the wood floor isn't even sticky. It smells like beer, but not piss, which is a massive plus in your book.

Each side of the inn has three rooms, and all the doors save for one in the front corner are wide open. No more than one current tenant; whoever you're about to wake up may be pleased for the business in spite of the hour.

Faster than you expect, a distinguished Trollsimer appears from a back room looking more awake and put together than anyone has any right being at this hour having just crawled out of bed. She looks more like a priceless oil painting in her dark green nightgown than real royalty does in layers of poufy cloth. Her horns are mismatched but somehow suit her, one bent at the top and the other tapering down into a point like a crochet hook. Her skin is the palest gray you've ever seen on a troll, almost an ash white, and her hair is trimmed in a stylish sort of undercut you've never come across before.

Sollux makes a sound like he's inhaled an unexpectedly large bulge, and the doggie bag is tossed back at you as he rushes towards the counter. You scramble to catch it; he won’t hear you call him an assmunch under your breath but you do it for posterity's sake.

“Holy shit, _Kanaya_?” He exclaims, wide awake and leaning so far over the counter you're tempted to kick him in the ass to watch him fall right over it like an ignoramus.

The Troll seems rooted in place for a moment, squinting her eyes as if she can't believe the gangly apparition before her, until a dawning recognition has her also stepping forward quickly with a blinding smile. She gives Sollux a dainty hug over the bar, and they're both so offensively tall that it hardly hampers their reunion.

“Sollux Captor? Well, it's certainly been a while since I saw you. I think the last time we spoke we were, what, around fifteen years old? If memory serves?” Kanaya asks brightly, holding Sollux loosely by the forearms in a genteel greeting you feel like only nobles bother to use. Somehow on her it seems less snooty and more heartfelt, although you can't pin down why that is.

Sollux is all pleased as punch smiles and eager energy. “Thomething like that. I haven't really been home for a long time.”

“Neither have I. As you may or may not know, mother’s crushingly impressive reputation drove me to seek my own life a few years ago. Though, I suspect the fault lies more with myself feeling inadequate in her shadow- as impetuous teenagers are wont to do- because she never suffered me the indignity of trying to bring me back to the estate. Letting me “work out my own shit”, no doubt.”

Sollux tilts his head with a puzzled moue. “No, I left for the College before you did and other than a few letterth haven't found the time to go back to catch up.”

Kanaya releases Sollux and glides to one of the kegs on the wall, and fills up two mugs of some dark liquid you hope to god is alcoholic. “Dawnstar is quite the trek from Goldenglow; what brings you up this way? Heading back to the College?” She asks, mugs rattling as she passes one to Sollux and slides the other down to the very end of the bar with a practiced ease and accuracy.

You quietly step up, snatch the cup, and retreat a few paces. She obviously knows you're here, but Sollux has her undivided attention at the moment and you aren't resentful of that. She'll acknowledge you when she's ready, and you're in no rush. You like seeing him so animated, and actually smiling at something that isn't another person's misfortune.

Sollux sips at the beer like tea. What kind of idiot _sips_ beer? You need to teach this guy how it's done so someone doesn't see him being a jackass in a tavern and beat him up to take his lunch money.

Sollux finishes drinking his beverage like a gigantic twat, and makes a pained grimace. “Unfortunately. It’th kind of a long story and I'm about to faceplant on your bar here, tho maybe in the morning we can talk more?”

Kanaya titters and waves a hand. “Of course. Don't worry about the room fee. It’s good to see you again, Sollux.”

“I’ll thneak thome coin into your bra later as repayment if you won't take it now. But yeah, you too.” He says warmly.

Kanaya again gives him a brief embrace, and Sollux smiles a horror of a smile, overlong incisors poking out doofily as he takes the room keys she passes him. He beckons you closer to hand you your key, stepping aside so as you reach to take it, you are placed directly in front of Kanaya.

You breathe in, and immediately halt the breath unfinished. The smell resting over your palate like crushed nightshade coming from Kanaya hits you like an avalanche. The world narrows down to her through tunnel vision, Sollux saying something you suspect are introductions lost to you as you instinctively bristle. You see her pretty jade green eyes widen, as she realizes the same thing you have, and you both kind of uncertainly stay still as statues, hardly daring to breathe.

Of course, she doesn't _need_ to breathe.

You interrupt whatever Sollux is saying, voice a bit high like someone's got their boot pressed into your throat. “Sollux? Could you fuck off for a little while? I think me and Kanaya need to _talk_.”

Sollux frowns, looking between the two of you like he's wondering if he should intervene but doesn't know how or why. Kanaya nods almost imperceptibly and he caves. “...Sure.” He acquiesces eventually. Skeptically. “Don't get into a fight with my inlaw becauthe you feel the burning desire to flaunt your preciouth perthonality.”

You wave a hand at him without looking away from Kanaya. “Yeah, yeah. Enjoy your beauty sleep, princess ballgargler. May your mattress be as soft and titillating as a sea of gently undulating bulges.”

Sollux departs at the speed of a chilled ooze, clearly reluctant to abandon the suddenly tense atmosphere, but leave he does.

His door clicks shut, and only you and Kanaya remain. Calculating.

The wind outside howls, and a few windows rattle in their panes. You feel distinctly naked without your full cuirass and sickles equipped. Kanaya is similarly unarmed, but you of all people know looks can be deceiving.

“So. Have you told him?” She asks at length, cutting to the chase and shattering the silence while slowly folding her long fingers over each other atop the counter in plain view.

Kanaya is beautiful. Everything about her is ethereal, in a sense, a sort of exotic flair present in the shape of her eyes and the plump of her lips. You try not to be drawn in. You know that's their game, their purpose; to be captivating, to be lulling.

“No. Have you?” You answer, cautiously setting your packs on a stool and sliding onto the other one. This is fine, nothing walking-on-eggshells about it. Just two creatures of the forbidden occult chatting it up, not like you have a blood feud or anything. Perish the thought.

“No. To my regret.” She says, and does honestly sound regretful. “My intention is not to be deceitful with him, he's quite dear to me. It's more that…I value his friendship as it stands, and feel no great rush to jeopardize it.”

You nod. You understand this particular brand of self preservation well. “You're scared he'll lose all his shit in a great, fantastic flaming shitshow. So much shit that people all the way in Hammerfell will be plucking it out of their hair for weeks, cursing his name for leaving his shit so illfully uncollected.”

“Essentially. Yes.” Kanaya agrees, and looks down at her elegant claws. She drums them on the table in a nervous gesture that has you a little thrown for how normal it is. “And you are afraid of the same, I will hazard to guess? I have yet to divine your relationship with my old friend, but if it is romantic in nature I can personally attest to the benefits of honesty regarding your-”

You stutter. “I can't. With him. I mean-” Kanaya gives you a pinched sort of look, equal parts doubtful and impatient. “Not that it's _him_ , he's uh, he's fine, I just can't...with anyone. It's not right to drop that sort of bomb on them after the fact. You know that.” You plant your elbows on the counter and bury your fingers in your hair, scratching hard at your scalp in frustration. “He thinks my eyes are the only thing wrong with me. If he found out the real reason I'm a walking talking pile of sentient garbage, I don't know how shit would go down.”

“Karkat, was it? Let me tell you a secret.” Kanaya says quietly, reaching under the bar to bring another beer up and slide it over to you in a motion altogether too smooth for a Troll.

“Ok. I'm ready for this groundbreaking revelation, any second now I'm going to have the most religious fucking experience of my life I just know it.” You snap, gingerly accepting the beer and it kills you to swig it down without first smelling it, but in an effort to be both culturally sensitive and display a shaky olive branch, you decide to trust Sollux’s undead friend isn't going to poison you.

Kanaya waits until you put the beer down, half empty in one go, with a quiet clink of glass. “You can't keep living with everyone at arm's-length. I tried, after I became this way, and was quite bitter and miserable. Then Rose came along and now things are, as she tactlessly jokes, _sanguine_.”

“Wow.” You say, and you try not to be an asshole about it, you really do.  “Like I haven't already imagined what it would be like only a _hundred million fucking times_ to not have to live life like a hermit so people don't kill you on sight, much less consider sloppy makeouts with you.”

“Why imagine it? The sloppy makeouts are well within your immediate reach, I think.” Kanaya suggests playfully, lips curving up in a grin as she pointedly glances at Sollux’s door. Her fangs poke out when she smiles, pearly and unobtrusive for all their deadly function. Sollux has more ridiculously oversized canines than the actual vampire, go figure.

“And when he finds out he's kissing a deformed overgrown horror? What the fuck happens then?” You demand, watching Kanaya show blatant fascination with the tide of red that rushes to your face.

“Perhaps,” she licks her lips and forces herself to primly tuck some errant black hair behind her ear rather than openly salivate over your blood on display, “we are not giving mister Captor enough credit? As a mage of the College he has likely dealt with our ilk before.”

“Yeah, likely _killed_ our ilk before.” You mutter, but give the notion due consideration. You could be blowing things out of proportion, assuming things about Sollux you have no way of really predicting. But the thought of coming clean with him, imagining his face twist and your conversations turn cold until he leaves you at the gates of Winterhold, makes a yawning pit in your stomach open up like a void.

“I think, despite how much of a curmudgeonly smartass he is, that I'd rather not risk…” You trail off slowly, frowning into your now empty beer. _“I'd rather not risk him hating me,"_ you don't finish, but Kanaya has a slightly crestfallen look that suggests she already knows what you mean.

The two beers haven't even touched you, and you wonder how many more Kanaya has stashed down below the bar. You dump a handful of septims on the counter in an effort to find out, for _science_ , and Kanaya turns your gold into alcohol like a motherfucking Wizard of Good Times.

“I understand.” She says softly, looking a little sorry for you. It doesn't sting like you feel it should, like a derisive patronization at how you dig your own grave and continue to just lie down in it time after time.

You decide that Kanaya is, for a vampire, exceptionally decent. Daresay you even think you _like_ her.

You pop the cork on the third beer, lamenting how many of these things it takes to get you anything even approaching hammered, and offer a smile at Kanaya as best you can. You're not very good at smiles- your cheeks bunch up near your eyes and your barely sharp teeth don't set together evenly. Terezi once told you you looked like a poor dentist’s wet dream when you actually full-out grinned, but your teeth aren't _that_ uneven, so she can go suck a bulge.

Kanaya smiles back, eyes softening and posture relaxed. You realize you’ve also subconsciously unwound, your ears are no longer pinned down and the hair on the back of your neck stopped standing on end a while ago.

“Sorry we showed up so late, and that I'm, well, me. You probably weren't expecting an adrenaline rush at dicks-o-clock in the morning.” You offer, sliding your third beer into the tidy growing pile.

Kanaya clears your bottles into a bin below the counter with hardly a ping of glass made. “I will admit I wasn't anticipating such excitement, no. All the same, I'm glad to see Sollux again and to have met your acquaintance. We certainly did spit directly on the social conventions of our respective factions didn't we?”

You smirk. You can definitely see yourself having a camaraderie with Kanaya. “Yeah, we didn't maul each other within seconds and now I'm sort of having a drink with you. Dad would love to hear this one, the irony is killing me.”

Kanaya laughs a polite sort of laugh behind the back of her hand, and smoothes down her gown. “I think I will petition to take my leave now, however. Rose will be wondering what has kept me.”

“Yeah, ok. Oh,” you give yourself a quick smack upside the head, _duh_ , “Karkat Vantas.” You say, extending your hand. “Since we fucked that part up.”

“Kanaya Maryam.” She responds in kind, taking your hand with a deceptively powerful shake. She’s cold, but you don't pull away.

“Goodnight.” You bid her when you let go of each other, waving a few of your fingers from where they grip the fourth bottle you've downed.

Kanaya drifts into the back room behind the bar, tall and slender and unnaturally graceful for being woken less than twenty minutes prior.

(Do vampires sleep? Do they sleep as restlessly as you? Would it be racist for you to ask her later? Can you _be_ racist to vampires?)

Because the tavern is completely empty and by the time you finish beer six you think you may begin to have trouble with compromised dexterity, you unlace your bracers and greaves and pry off your boots. You pack them away and in the silence of the large room at night, with the hearth in the middle dimmed down to a fading orange glow for lack of tending or tinder, you feel somehow small.

Your exhales gust out like constant sighs, and you trace the warped grain in the wood with a claw while you think.

The next full moon isn't for a few weeks. You won't _have_ to move on until then, and you'll manage to nab a good amount of time at the college with Sollux before you disappear. Maybe you'll come back later, a year or so from now, when your face and name have faded from memories and you can again disappear before a full moon with none the wiser. You're sure Sollux will ream you a couple new assholes, you can practically hear the butthurt bitching now, but at least you'll have another longterm friend you can keep that isn't Terezi.

Sharp as a tack Terezi, who makes you want to sometimes pop her head off her pointy shoulders, and sometimes pin her to a wall so she'll just shut _up_. In the end your wavering is all that was to blame, her becoming fed up with your hesitation and you growing steadily more desperate as you tried to pick which quadrant you wanted to commit to courting her in.

You'd decided on _no_ quadrants, ultimately, when one night she'd distracted you with a game of _let's-investigate-the-Silverblood-family-a-fucking-gain_ under the pretense of _maybe_ doing some handsy fooling around if you cooperated with the “chief detective” and you'd lost track of what time it was. Midnight struck, she'd nearly beheaded you on reflex in a garden of tomato plants (all of which you'd squashed that night), and the list of people who knew your real secret grew one longer while your list of romantic possibilities grew one shorter.

You are on beer six and a half, just starting to feel slightly buzzed _finally_ , when you hear the door across the room click open.

You don't glance over even though you know who it is, and _why_ it is, stubbornly staring down at your soporific as Sollux silently stands at your shoulder. He's wearing a thin undershirt and his pants, but no shoes, like he was about to go to sleep but decided to be a spying piece of crap instead.

“You were listening in, weren't you, you fucking soggy mannerless jizzpuppet? God, is nothing fucking sacred anymore? Can I so much as go take a shit in the woods without someone having to know about it in intimate detail? Do you want me to describe for you my exact bowel movements with an interpretive dance?” You start up tiredly. You're feeling a little too drained for a rant right now but by god if Sollux hasn't earned one.

“Pleathe don't do a shit-dance. I wath _trying_ to make sure you two didn't kill each other, for reasonth I still can't comprehend.” He insists. “Tho what wath that all about?”

“It's about a little thing called none of your fucking beeswax.” You grumble, and pick at the corner of the label peeling off the beer in a curl.

Sollux deliberately installs him on the seat immediately next to you, thigh touching your own and turned sideways, leaning his elbow on the counter so he can stare at you even more obnoxiously. You stonily refuse to disclose fuck-all. Your shit is on lockdown. You're not going to out Kanaya, and you're sure as fuck not going to shoot yourself in your own foot, so Sollux will just have to deal with not being let in on the fun illegal secret party.

“Will you jutht fucking- _look_ at me?” Sollux demands exasperatedly, snatching the almost empty beer from your hands with his bullshit brain powers and _that_ gets your attention.

“What do you fucking want from me, man?” You try not to shout but it comes out too loud for the quiet space anyway. “So I don’t want to spill the secrets of my entire existence to you, big fucking deal. Get over it! I don't have to tell you anything, it's _my_ shit and _I_ deal with it on my own and it's not anything you need to worry about so just fucking don't-”

Sollux _zaps_ you, hard enough that you actually jump a little and swear, two seconds from reaching out to wring his scrawny neck when he talks over your prolific stream of bad language.

“I'm not _athking_ you to divulge all your melodramatic shit.” He snaps, incandescently peeved. “I'm _athking_ you to _trutht_ me.”

“I do! But it’s the same fucking thing in this case!” You bellow, helplessly smacking the counter with the palm of your hand. “This is something that goes beyond you specifically, it's not something I trust _anyone_ with. Cry me a goddamn river if you don't like it, I'm not telling you.”

“Why?” Sollux asks, so _fucking nosy_ you want to beat him about the horns. You don't get why he's so fuckdammed _insistent_ , what does it _matter_ to him!?

“Because you'll fucking…!” You start, and have to stop yourself to take a really big breath and locate wherever your inside voice has fucked off to. You find it, but the pause has petered some of your angry steam out and your words are unsure.

“Because you won't like it.” You try, making to snatch your beer back. You _paid_ for those bottles god dammit. Sollux levitates it just out of your reach.

“Why.” He says again, bicolored eyes laser focused on you and luminous in the dark. You don't intend to hold his gaze, but you can't look away. His eyes are magnetic, set in an angular face. There's a small wrinkle between his brows you want to smudge away with your thumb, which is the weirdest compulsion you've ever had that will remain ignored.

“What do you mean, ‘why’? Because I'm not a dumbdumb with no grasp of things people find generally off-putting.” You snort, and give Sollux a quick middle finger before snatching a fresh beer before he can stop you.

“I don't think you're off-putting.” He says quietly, setting your previous beer down with nary a clink. Hot shit showoff fucking _mage_.

You make a show of swinging back in your seat, pressing the back of your wrist to your forehead dramatically. “Be still my heart, you're wooing the fuck out of me here. I've never heard praises so high. “Don't worry Karkat, _I_ don't think you're less offensive than the average toadstool.” Real great.”

Sollux groans and rubs his temples. You can tell he's hardcore rolling his eyes by the way watery blue and red light flashes along his cheekbones briefly. “For fuck’s sake will you thtop being such a tremendouth bitch for like ten secondth.” He says, and this time he yanks the beer from your fingers with his actual hands.

He sets it down harshly, the clack loud enough to make you flinch, and time slows to a crawl as one of his hands fists in your shirt and drags you forward. His other hand settles on your cheek, long fingers cradling your face and you distantly notice from a million miles away, from the pinprick pigeonhole of awareness that you are looking through, that his thumb is gently sliding along your cheekbone.

Everything moves too fast and too slow all at once as Sollux huffs a breath you think is maybe annoyed, maybe fond. You're frozen, not even breathing, and he presses his lips into yours gently.

You're not stupid, you know objectively what you should be doing, but you can't make the neurons in your shorted-out brain fire. You're waiting for the kick in the pants that should be coming any second now, right, because the books always make it seem like people just know how to _do_ this and-

Sollux pulls away and looks like he's trying hard to hide how crushed he is that you imitated a dead fish instead of kissing him back.

“I- sorry, I don't- uh...really know...” You feel like a tool, so far out of your element and lost at sea that all you can do is avoid eye contact as much as possible and scald Sollux’s hand still resting on your cheek with the force of your blush. The fingers on both of your hands are curled into loose fists, and he's so close you could bunp noses. You should _really_ walk away now, this is a terrible idea-

Sollux pulls back a fraction of an inch, reads your flaming face like an open book, and smirks at you. “Oh my god you're thuch a _kid_. Relax.” He says, and again strokes his thumb along your cheek. You try not to twitch at the sensation.

He moves in, slower, and while you're not ready for it this time either you manage to at least do _something_ after another few stunned seconds. Your hand comes up carefully, and you lay it atop his own and feel the tendons and bones beneath thin gray skin.

It occurs to you that you should do something with your mouth. Without really having a clue what is sexy or absolutely _not_ sexy, you cautiously press back and make an effort at copying Sollux. He must appreciate the attempt, because he makes a soft hum somewhere in his thorax and you feel a strange bubbling in a deep part of your chest.

Sollux’s other hand releases your shirt and smoothes the wrinkles down, fingers playing along your collarbones as he goes. You realize you have _two_ hands, and only one is presently doing stuff, so you unclench the fist you've been resting atop the bar this whole time and awkwardly set it on his shoulder, pressing your fingers in a little. You stop when you realize you could probably pepper him with bruises without even trying, and he actually snickers at you against your mouth.

His big dumb fangs are getting in the way a little, because the giant idiot can't seem to stop smiling. You cuff his shoulder since your hand is already there, and he moves to kiss the corner of your mouth and sporfle a smothered chuckle there.

“You have no idea what you're doing.” He whispers between mouthing at your ear and trailing pecks along your jaw. His voice right in your aurals makes you shiver.

“You fucking started it.” You murmur back, and make an embarrassing noise when Sollux drops his head to your neck, and then tugs the collar of your shirt away to leave a brace of teethmarks in your shoulder.

You've nowhere left to look but out into the indistinct empty space over his head, so you notice the sparks that skitter down his horns when you slide the hand on his shoulder up into his hair. It's strange to be kissing sitting down next to each other, but you're kind of glad that if he was going to jump you anyway, he did it when the height difference was less noticeable.

You figure you can't go wrong copying Sollux (if he's going to mock you, he will then by extension also be mocking himself) so you catch the tip of his ear between your fangs and feel thoroughly stupid until he hisses and snakes an arm behind your back to pull you off your stool. You stumble forward towards him more and his attempts to crush you against his chest are nothing short of pathetic with his utter lack of muscle mass.

Your shoulder throbs in time with your pulse; you know there will be a line of puffy scabs there in the morning but right now you don't give a pirouetting upside down fuck. Sollux is perched on the very edge of his barstool, and with you standing, you are _almost_ the same height so he unbends himself to trail nips and kisses back up your neck. You feel the knobs of his vertebrae as he moves, press your claws in experimentally and learn how his shoulder blades shift beneath wasted muscle.

It makes a sudden well of pity spring up in you like a leaky ship. He was in a cave for months with cruel outlaws, but _you_ rescued him, he's _yours_ -

Sollux groans and you realize you're squeezing the air out of his lungs. You let go to rest your hands at the small of his back, surprised at how natural it is for them to lay there. He tries not to be too obvious about gulping down air, but he laughed at you for being inept so you return the favor.

Sollux kisses you again and you suspect it is partly to shut you up but reasons have mostly ceased to matter. His hand leaves your cheek at last to cradle the back of your head, and you kind of hate how your mushy little heart melts at the gesture. You feel him idly carding chunks of your hair this way and that with his claws.

You think you've got the basic kissing thing down, now. Breathing through your nose but not being loud and gross about it, meeting with equal force and letting yourself naturally separate for a few seconds. Sollux knows what he's doing at least; you want to kick him the tiniest bit for that because you are in no way ever going to trick him into thinking you're suave.

You feel Sollux puff out a heavy breath and he tilts his head, slotting his mouth against yours at more of an angle and you are confused for all of the three seconds it takes for him to run a split tongue along your bottom lip teasingly.

You feel your face light up like the surface of the sun but you let him in, parting your lips enough to allow him a small amount of entry. Sollux takes the hand from your back and places it on your neck, running a claw behind your ear distractingly.

You again don't know what to do so you make shit up as you go. You assume straight-up tongue fucking him is probably not attractive or correct, so you settle for nervously rubbing aimless patterns into the small of his back as he coaxes you along. You almost jerk away when his tongue wraps slightly around yours, shit is _weird,_ but you hold fast and allow it. It quickly goes from being weird to blowing your mind.

When you feel a little less incompetent and Sollux is making these choked off noises in his chest, you dare to try poking your tongue through the gauntlet of his teeth. The rest of his mouth is, amazingly, not as much of a clusterfucked nightmare as you were expecting- he's got sharp little fangs you run your tongue over, but nothing is excessively out of place or overgrown like those two front ones.

You think the lisp-causing teeth are cute, but you'd probably never admit it come boot or iron maiden. They'd have to kill you first, and even in the afterlife you'd deny it.

You don't know what an appropriate stopping point for this activity is, so you sneak your hands under Sollux’s shirt and rest your claws on his hips while you can. You stroke your thumb up and down in a senseless repetition along his side, can feel the very bottom most ribs at the top of your reach sticking out like shelves.

It makes you feel sad, and angry, and a little helpless to bring your arms around his chest and hug, only to have them close in on so much empty space you can nearly touch your own sides again before you have him pressed close enough to feel his quickened heartbeat.

The kiss naturally breaks after a few more minutes and although you have a fuller frame Sollux is limbs for miles, so he drapes himself over you like a bundle of rope and buries his face in your neck, just breathing and purring.

You feel dizzy. Like your planets have been knocked out of alignment, and you're not sure what to orbit anymore. It wasn't a kiss in the rain, or a romantic date, but you feel a possessiveness deep in your bloodpusher that screams bloody murder at the thought of someone else taking this and it scares you. It scares you because you shouldn't have this, he _still doesn't know_ and when he finds out you'll be even more crushed.

Right on que, Sollux blows a hole in the side of your pleasure cruise. “Will you tell me what you think ith thuch an issue, now?” He says into your neck, fairly tickling. “Pleathe?”

You gaze into the far corner of the ceiling and concentrate for a moment, harder than you've ever concentrated before, on preserving this second in time. On imprinting it upon your brain, on searing it into your memory like a brand. How Sollux’s hipbones feel like knives with a thin tarp of skin blunting them, but so smooth under your fingertips. How his head is a weight at the crook of your neck and his hair is tickling your nose. How it feels to just hold someone close in a non-platonic fashion for more than a polite few seconds, his hands tracing burning circles into your upper arms.

You jog your shoulder to get Sollux to lift his head, and you banish your own purr. You wiggle out of his grip and he lets you with a lopsided frown. Your heart squeezes and your eyes feel hot as you pile your remaining beers into an empty saddlebag- you'll be needing those in a bit.

You meet his eyes as best you can, enough to painfully spill your guts before beating a retreat because you're going to rip this bandaid off right now and it's going to hurt.

“I'm a werewolf you fucking _imbecile_. Do you get it now?” You grit out, watching the frown on Sollux’s face deepen. You snarl and pick up Allie's saddle, and talk into the worn leather because it's easier than facing him. “You can't have something normal with me, because once a town notices I go missing every moon, they'll figure it out and I'll have to leave. _Again_. You don't want my shitty blood curse ruining your life constantly. Trust me on this.”

You don't look up because you want your last memory of him to be of his hands on your face, not a grimace.

You make it to your room, and funny, has the floor always been that blurry? You toss Allie’s saddle on the nearest table, _again_ , you fucked up _again_ , and this time you didn't even fuck up by doing something, you fucked up by doing _nothing_. You should have put the kibosh on that kiss milliseconds into it happening, no, _before_ it happened.

You're rapidly hurtling towards full blown distraught, enough that you drag your forearm across your eyes and make to close the door while muffling a sniffle, so when you yank it shut and it stops just short of closing you don't understand what the problem is and yank on it harder.

“Ow. Cut it out, shithead.”

You look down and see that Sollux has jammed his foot in the doorway. You almost kick it out of the way, but the doorknob heats up like an iron and you yelp and jump back from it, waving your undoubtedly burnt hand and cussing up a storm.

“Will you _fuck off?_ ” You shriek, clutching your hand to your chest and sitting on the edge of your bed. You feel five years old again, a tangle of hurt and confused and wronged by the world for committing no greater crime than being hatched the way you were. As if you could _help_ that sort of thing.

Your shoulders are hunched up around your ears defensively and you find yourself wishing for your armor and blades. Nobody could hurt you if you hurt them first. But mostly you feel like a crinkled, dried out waterskin. Empty, spent. Wanting nothing more than to go to sleep for a century, except you _can't_ , because your awful fucking beast blood keeps you awake more often than not.

You feel the mattress dip slightly next to you, and you staunchly ignore Sollux in favor of glaring at your knees.

“Thorry, I didn’t mean to burn you.” He says quietly, and pries your hand away and into his lap. He holds it in both of his, casting a simple healing spell, and you watch from the corner of your eye. Your hand is so different from his, more of a calloused paw for holding tight to weapons while he has the hands of someone who writes and reads and maybe plays some stupid fairy instrument like a lute.

The fact that Sollux is in here not actively trying to kill or spit on you isn't terribly surprising- you'd never exactly expected him to react violently in the first place- but it's the waiting for what you know is coming that's killing you, how he's drawing this out under the pretense of patching you up. The amber glow from the healing spell fades, and when he's finished he simply sits there and cradles your limp hand silently.

_This_ is what you were hoping to avoid. That Sollux would show interest in you- he did, you're not as dense as a rock- and then act on it- he did- and then figure out the crux of your entire goddamn life- _he did_ \- and then backpedal to a hasty _“let's just be friends, yeah?”- he's about to._

The worst is that you wouldn't (you don't) blame him. He's well within his rights to pick a partner capable of not ruining his life down the line by putting him in danger by association, and it stings like saltwater in a wound but you _know_ this.

You hiccup a little and try to jerk your hand away, but he holds onto it and keeps it put. “If you're done sending me on an emotional circlejerk, maybe you could let me be miserable in peace?” You try, doing an admirable job of keeping your voice even. Mostly.

“You are tho fucking impothible.” Sollux says, flipping your hand over so he can continue prodding at the tender pulp of your heart by winding his fingers with yours. “Firtht of all, fuck you very much for assuming what _I_ want. Egotithtical much?”

“Wha-”

“Thecond of all, what ever gave you the impression that my life'th goal ith to live right in a city, thurrounded by people?” Sollux continues, and you are understanding the situation less and less the more gibberish that comes out of his facegash.

“Third of all, fuck you for thinking you could hide it from me at all, I'm not retarded; I'd have realized what’th up thooner or later. Thankth for the vote of confidence in my mental acuity, though.” He finishes, the ensuing silence deafening. But he still hasn't let go of your hand, and you are at a loss.

“So, what, you're not going to go wash your mouth out with soap now? Is that what you're saying?” You guess, frustrated that your paradigm has been flipped on its head.

You don't see it, but somehow you know Sollux is rolling his eyes. “No, Karkat, I'm not going to go cleanse mythelf with holy fire. You can unclench your buttcheekth now.”

Hearing your name out of his mouth is more reassuring than you want it to be. “Fuck you, my buttcheeks remain as loose and limber as a goddamn bowl of jelly in an earthquake.”

Sollux snickers quietly, and brings your hand up to slowly kiss your knuckles and you nearly die. It is one of _the_ most romantic things _ever_ , it's fucking _textbook_ , he's even looking up at you from where he's bent his head and you feel your brain go _asdfadasdfdss._ You can't help but sheepishly grin just the smallest amount, and the dimmest, minutest glimmer of hope ignites in your chest and you decide not to stamp it out. Not _quite_ yet.

Sollux speaks against your knuckles, breath ghosting over your hand warmly and making your skin tingle. “Ith your freakout over? Can I kithh you again? Becauthe I was kind of enjoying that.” Before you can answer he pulls away and gets a consternated look on his face. “Oh man, you weren't having an exithtential crisis that whole time, were you? I wath bringing my A game and everything.”

“Uh. Only towards the end.” You answer honestly, feeling whiplashed from the emotional tornado of the last hour, but beginning to think you're possibly settling on the verge of something good.

Sollux nods seriously, like the occupation of your thoughts while he's busy macking on you is super important, and you think _huge fucking nerd_ and then he's kissing you again, hand back on your cheek in a mirror of how you started before.

Sollux sighs against your mouth and brushes his thumb under your eye, wiping away the damp track of red there and the action is almost pale for how sweetly he does it, until he follows it up with a bite to your earlobe that makes you shudder. You become aware of the world slowly tilting sideways as Sollux gradually pushes you down on the bed, and then he's leaning over you while spooned against your side nibbling your lips like you've got the secrets of the fucking universe trapped beneath your skin and he wants to work them out.

Your hand is wedged beneath Sollux’s side, but it's an easy matter to lift his slight weight with it to free yourself and skate your palm along his back under his shirt. You accidentally lose track of your claws and are about to apologize for the thin welts that will likely result when he groans and suddenly his tongue is prodding at you insistently, and you notice he's hovering above you more than laying next to you now.

Curious, you draw your claws down his back again and this time he makes a sort of ' _ngh_ ’ noise and woah yep he's grabbing your horns like hotcakes on sale. You stop marking him up so you can carefully heft his leg over you because it's resting perilously close to certain anatomy, but you realize your mistake when it makes your hips almost line up.

There isn't much for him to hold onto, but Sollux has you by the horns and takes the liberty of using them to pull your head up and expose the column of your throat to latch onto. You make a noise like a chicken that's been startled, which quickly shifts into an embarrassing keen you instantly choke off. Sollux seems encouraged though, and he's back at your mouth before you've hardly caught your breath.

You twist tongues with him some more- literally, his tongue is fucking crazy- until the pressure between your legs has you a little concerned. You scratch another few small lines down Sollux’s back, he huffs out a groan like he's been shot, and he drops his admittedly negligible weight onto you fully to grind his hips into yours.

You freeze, cataloguing exactly how far your sloppy makeouts are progressing, and promptly hit the panic button.

“Wait, wait.” You pant against Sollux's mouth, placing your palms on his chest and pushing at him. “Just...chill. For a minute.”

Sollux shudders and grips you tighter for a second before rolling off you, settling against your side again but pointedly keeping his hips away. “Right, thorry.” He says, voice raspier than you've heard it before.

He's also a little out of breath, and when you feel brave enough to look at him head on, his entire face is a bright mustard yellow. Yours matches in red. He's grinning, teeth on full display and you feel the ground drop out beneath you because he's looking at you tenderly, and he's brushing a thumb along your lips and this is the sort of thing you've only ever read about, only ever imagined.

He pushes your hair out of your eyes, lingering on the shell of your ear as he tucks it back. “Tho you turn into a dog every tho often. What about that made you think I wath going to freak out?”

You don't want to have this talk, not when you still feel like it isn't too late to fuck everything up for yourself again. But you're in too deep to turn around now, and if Sollux thinks this is just some cutesy mythological bullshit he's got another think coming.

“I don't change into a _dog_ , my bones crack and my skin splits and I turn into a fucking _monster_.” You spit bitterly. This time you don't let yourself be a little bitch about it- you lock your eyes with Sollux even though you know the red in them must be a burning glow, and you pretend the hand he's got on your hip isn't there so you can give it to him straight, let him know that you turn into a _nightmare_ , not a puppy.

“You've never even seen a werewolf if you're being this chill about it you stupid fucker- they're _ugly_. We're huge. I’m disfigured and can't form words with a mouth I've crushed fucking _skulls_ in and claws longer than your forearm. I look like someone took a real wolf and stretched it over a skeleton made from a bunch of random animal bones that don't make a single fuck of sense together-”

Sollux interrupts you with a kiss, mashing his lips on yours and not letting up until you stop trying to talk around him. He pulls back and raises an eyebrow at you, and you feel too close for this, like you shouldn't be breathing out the realities of what you are into the same air he breathes in.

“Fuck, do you want to know why you're making a huge mistake or not?” You feel desperate. You _need_ to make him understand _now_ what he's doing. What he's risking, and losing, by having anything to do with you. “How are you just going along with this, are you actually completely braindead or do you not realize what I am?”

Sollux mouths languidly at a spot just below your ear. “Don't care.” He states, one of his sharp teeth pricking you open.

You shove him away, holding him back with a single hand. His expression is carefully neutral and it makes you incensed. “Well _I_ fucking care, you prurient jackass! If you’re just leading me on thinking you're going to get a sexy story to tell your little wizard buddies about you're sorely fucking mistaken and you can kiss my fucking-”

“Kk.”

“I'd rather stick my bulge in a smelter grate than let you-”

“Kk.”

“And you're sitting here totally unruffled! I think you should be a _little_ more concerned that I'm capable of crushing every fucking bone in your body, you think you know what I am but you have _no_ fucking-”

“Karkat if you don't shut the fuck up I'm going to burn the eyebrowth off your face and then your outside will accurately reflect how obthenely fucking dumb your inside ith.” You keep holding Sollux away from you, but you don't want to look perpetually surprised for the next three months with missing facial hair so you bite your tongue furiously.

Sparks travel up Sollux's horns and you wonder if it means he's getting angry. Contrary to your assumption, his hand on yours remains gentle as he continues to not-quite-glare at you but there is a significant weight in his gaze that gives you pause.

“I don't care what you are becauthe I'm trying to figure out _who_ you are. But you keep thtopping me at every turn.” He says, pitching up on one elbow.

It must be a height thing, you belatedly think, some stupid _tallness_ complex that he defaults to in arguments because having to look level with people unnerves him. Maybe the lack of oxygen way up there in his usual headspace is why he's apparently completely fucking bonkers.

He plows on, hand rising off your hip to poke you in the chest. “You're the biggetht fucking emotional cockblock I've ever met and you're doing it to _yourthelf_.”

“So you _are_ mad I won't put out. I'm not that kind of woman, Captor.”

Sollux scrubs his hands on his face and makes a sound in them you can only describe as ‘strangled rabbit’.

“ _No_ , you thtupid fucking-! If all I wanted to do wath get thome tail why would-” Immediately he falls silent, mouth still open but no words coming out. His lips quiver into a wobbly smile and he adopts the strained look of someone trying to either hold back uproarious laughter or an earth-shattering fart as he realizes.

You are so fucking offended by the accidental dog pun, not even _ten hot minutes_ after you bared your heart to him, that you are rendered completely speechless. You are so unbelievably fucking _#triggered_ right now.

It's probably a blessing in disguise that you can't find the words to blast him to kingdom come through unadulterated rage alone, because he manages to get his shit under control with a few deep breaths and when he speaks he only cracks up and has to start over a _few_ times.

“If all I wanted from you wath thex, why would I have asked you what your hangup wath in the first place? Why would I care?” Sollux manages, adamantly schooling himself back to being serious again.

You give him a good view of your fangs as you make to snarl at him a dozen reasons why he's wrong and also foolish enough to put any given court jester out of a job, but you can't because he has a point.

If he was looking for a quick fuck, he'd hardly have to look far. Might even get one for free, if he offered magical services in exchange for physical services.

Now it begged the question; why you?

“So let's say, hypothetically, you _aren't_ suffering from Stockholm syndrome, and you _don't_ have a savior complex, and you _don't_ have a weird closet fetish for bestiality, and you _aren't_ just thirsty because your well’s been dry for like a year,” you narrow your eyes at him, daring him to interrupt you, “then why me?”

Sollux gives you a look that makes you feel foolish, somehow, like you're missing the last piece to a puzzle he's rubbing right in your face.

“You're backing me into a corner tho hard here, dude. I haven't been grilled this bad since the time I thet mythelf on actual fire as an apprentice.” Helplessness is starting to bleed into his voice. “Either you think I like you becauthe I'm crazy, dethperate, or have an attraction to dogs in a way too literal sense of the word, or I like you becauthe- hold onto your fucking seat, thith may blow you away here- _maybe_ , becauthe I jutht fucking _like_ you?” Sollux cocks his head at you and spreads his hands in a universal what-the-fuck gesture. “How am I thuppothed to win here?”

You feel supremely stupid, and also like a jackass, and also like you want to apologize but fuck him because you wouldn't be in this emotional quagmire in the first place if he hadn't dragged you down with him. You want to reply, but you aren't sure how. It's difficult to forcibly wrap your head around the notion that someone is showing interest in you for _you_ , and it's got you floundering, lost in the deep foreboding sea of What Are Relationships And How Do They Work.

It's your turn to look helpless, but Sollux has been watching your mental gymnastics play out on your face, which must be telling enough because even though you didn't verbally apologize for your egregiously fucked up logic and smearing of his character, he brings out that big dorky smile again when you stop putting any strength into the arm holding him back.

He looks thrilled, like you've just handed him the keys to the high king’s palace, and you aren't sure-

you really don’t understand yet where his enthusiasm over you is coming from but you think-

You think maybe Sollux can teach you to hate yourself a tiny bit less. If you give him the chance.

He kisses you again, no rush to the movement of his lips against yours. He traces the curve of your ribs, lingers on the raised grubscars, lines himself up with you like he could fuse your very souls if he willed it hard enough.

Sollux kisses you like a he's a drowning man and you're his surface just out of reach. You're still fumbling with technique, so overly focused on getting it right that your ability to multitask is limited to keeping up with him and wandering your hands over various parts of his body.

He doesn't complain about your painfully obvious lack of experience, instead giving you plenty of new things to assimilate with every passing minute; brushing his lips along your cheek, running his hands over your hips, kissing your closed eyelids, quietly rumbling in his chest.

It feels like you map out his skin for hours, daring a few times to be bold enough to press your mouth to his shoulder, or neck, or jaw. It makes your ears go red when you do that, because you can feel his eyes on you with undivided attention.

Sollux trails his fingers down the outside of your thigh, but on his way back up his thumb dips a little too close in and you shift away before you realize you've done it. You tug him up a few inches so you can hide your face in his neck and he pauses. You notice his heartbeat is fast like a drumroll, and he draws breath a little too quickly for the lack of activity happening.

_Oh_. He's again gradually folded himself into a C shape, and it hits you like a big brick of HEY STUPID to the face.

“Sorry, I'm not really-” you don't know exactly how to say it without sounding like a prude, or a nervous newbie, but you _are_ nervous. You're _into_ it, you are, but your bulge is staying firmly behind your sheath from the force of your buzzing nerves while Sollux seems to be having the opposite problem.

“It’th ok, it’th cool. I get it.” Sollux says easily, and you can hear his pulse beginning to slow down. He tucks his chin atop your head, and his arm circles your waist. His other hand he brings up and tucks against your side, fingers rubbing soothing circles into your skin.

You stay like that for a few more minutes, until Sollux shuffles around a bit more. His pants...problem...must have resolved itself and he arranges himself against your side like a bracket.

You both just lay, and breathe, and exist. You can hear Sollux’s steady bloodpusher, hear his soft breathing, in and out.

“Do you promithe not to flip every shit you've ever taken in your life tomorrow?” Sollux asks quietly, breath stirring your hair.

“No promises. But I'll try.” You agree, your higher function thoughts filtering back to you in pieces.

This was a third option you hadn't really considered as being a possibility. Your life just didn't go that way. Nice things didn't happen to you. The best you ever let yourself hope for was 'ok’, and now here you are with 'possibly amazing’ and you don't know how to comprehend it. It's like this delicate, fragile thing you don't want to break, like if you stay still enough and don't scootch around Sollux won't wake up in the morning and realize you're a cursed waste of skin.

The arm around your waist hugs you tighter briefly and you press a shy kiss into Sollux's neck, feeling like you're taking too much, leeching all the good out of this stroke of luck in one go and tomorrow reality will come crashing back down around your stubby horns.

“I can thmell your thinkpan burning, calm down. I'll thtill think you're pretty in the morning, babe.”

You smack Sollux for that to hide how it does make you feel just a teensy bit better.

“I'll still think you're ugly in the morning so I guess we're even.”

Sollux licks a stripe up your cheek, you slap him again, and he reaches down to tug the blanket at the foot of the bed up. The night's early winter chill is held at bay as Sollux holds you, and you stay up for several more hours just memorizing the same patch of his chest over and over because there's nothing else to look at and you don't understand how this happened to you. _You_.

You don't know which divine or daedra is responsible for this, and you only grudgingly acknowledge their existence in the first place, but you figure tomorrow you'll shoot them all a quick prayer anyway. Just in case.

Sollux snores quietly. You don't even care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed our latest chapter of Why Are Emotions So Hard: Defensively Assumptive Asshole Edition. Kudos and comments welcome and appreciated- I think I nailed this chapter pretty damn good but if I fell short of expectations I'd like to know how for future improvements. C:


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